


Mercy In Darkness ~ Vox Machina

by DoctorGemini



Category: Critical Role (Web Series), Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types
Genre: Bows & Arrows, Campaign 1 (Critical Role), Daggers, Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, F/F, F/M, Fights, Guns, Half-orc, M/M, Magic, Swearing, slight head bashing with Keyleth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-13 05:54:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 46,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28523526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoctorGemini/pseuds/DoctorGemini
Summary: Though she was banished by the organization, Lady Kima asks her to join on her quest to Kraghammer to go into the depth below to stop a great evil within.  Reluctant to go but agrees, Xena Sharptooth joins her; what dangers await her down there and who the hell are these clowns?!
Relationships: Percival "Percy" Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III/Vex'ahlia, Scanlan Shorthalt/Pike Trickfoot
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5





	1. Character & Backgrounds

**Author's Note:**

> Introduction/Background  
> Xena Sharptooth has lived as an urchin most of her life and being abandoned by her own mother she took to the street and stole food from the markets and earn gold by singing. However her luck rang out when the fruit seller caught and prepared to chop her hands off as punishment, but then an old Paladin by the name of Sir Alistair Brightworth, servant to Bahamut stopped this a says that he will take this half-orc and make something out of her. With little to no choice but to go with the old paladin, he takes her to the monastery and begins her training. As she grew she became strong and skillful with a shield and sword and was given the test to become one of the generals. 
> 
> Unfortunately, being a half-orc the some of the paladins and clerics were terrified, disgust, and jealous that such a creature would become one of the leaders. Before she could even start the test the head of the monastery struck a trial of scandal and murder on her; to her horror and sadness no one, not even her brothers and sisters in training took a stand with her and she was banished from the one place she thought was her true home. Now older and bitter Xena took to the mountains, killing bandits and evil creatures to take her mind off her anger and ignore the voice of a being who asks for forgiveness and redemption. 
> 
> In town for a drink and supplies, Xena comes across an old companion of hers, Lady Kima who she trained with. She pleads to Xena to come with her to Kraghammer to find a great evil that could be hidden within its depths; with great hesitation and a migraine from the voice in her head she agrees and goes with her to find this darkness and hopes that not only she makes it out alive but to have the voice stop talking to her.

**Character Info Sheet**

Name: Xena Sharptooth 

30 ft Walking 

AC: 19

Class: Paladin lv. 9 

Oath of Vengeance 

God: Bahamut

Race: Half-Orc 

Background: Urchin 

HP: 94

Armour: Mithril Breastplate 

Weapons: Animated Shield Brooch of Shielding Flame Tongue Short-sword

Holy Symbol of Bahamut Platinum Dragon attached by a leather string and hangs from her neck under her armour

**Abilities**

Strength: 20 (5+)

Dexterity: 16 (6+)

Constitution: 18 (4+)

Intelligence: 15 (2+)

Wisdom: 15 (2+)

Charisma: 16 (3+)

** Saving Throws  **

Strength +8

Dexterity +6

Constitution +7

Intelligence +5

Wisdom (P) +9

Charisma (P) +10


	2. Prologue

**Prologue**

* * *

Xena Sharptooth was having a good day!

Not only did she get rid of the rest of the bandits that have been terrorizing a village but she also found a bag of holding! How the bloody hell the leader came by such a thing is beyond her but she didn't question it cause she can only imagine what the vibrating purrs in her head would do.

Oh yes, ever since her banishment from the Paladins of Bahamut the Platinum Dragon, (that stupid lizard) has not let her forget that they have not forsaken her. No matter how much she tried to ignore them they seem to insist on sticking around. Not to mention it didn't really help that she was helping villages and other unpopular areas with their troubles for only a few things like food and sleep. Hell, in a few minutes she is about to head out to the farmers' home and help them harvest their goods in exchange for a sack of vegetables; can't exactly tell a god to fuck off when you keep on doing good deeds left and right.

Oddly though, as the order/the heads of the order tore her holy symbol from her armor the day they banished her, they allowed her to keep it along with her weapons.

"The Platinum Dragon gave you those tools, yet though you have used them for your own gain instead of for others, they are still yours." one of the head ass-holes had explained as they dragged her out. Scoffing at the whole situation, she puts the last of the goods in her new bag of holding, she puts the strap over her shoulder and makes her way to the village.

The breastplate, though showed it has seen many battles with scuff marks and a few dents here and there one could tell it was kept after Xena thanked the heavens that it was made out of mithril one of the sturdier metals in the world.

Xena hums, as she walks through the animal-made trail, feeling pretty good besides the few [this needs a tiny bit more contextualizing; are these recent scars?] scars added to her body; particularly the one at her cheekbone almost making her lose her eye were it not for turning her head the last second.

_There's a spark inside us_

_that we can all ignite_

_and all that's dark inside us_

_will flicker into light_

Like any warrior who has been in battle; Xena considered scars and wounds merely accessories and reminders that she had survived. She learned in a library that Orcs regard battle scars as tokens of pride and ornamental scars as things of beauty.

Her light green skin threw her scars into sharp relief and, being fairly knotty or welted, shone like beacons the minute a stray ray of light hit her at any angle. And as if she weren't horrific enough for humans to take a gander at, her fellow Orcs were given pause at her green flesh as well. Most of the Orcs she noticed in the moments before they'd charge her in battle had grey pigmentation after all. Of all the healers and friendly scholars she would come across none of them could explain what was going on with her skin, she can only assume it had something to do with her parents or a mutation.

_There's a power in every breath_

_there's a power in every note_

_a power that starts within the heart_

_a power that rises through the throat_

Her tusks, though not prominent, are a further reminder to people of her background whenever she grinned in amusement or gave a sneer at a threat. She was of course teased for her features and there had been times where she wanted nothing more than to file her tusks, they did help her in a pinch when she had to bite an offender who thought covering her mouth was a good idea.

She still chuckles at that memory.

Her wild black hair still a mess after one of the bandits cut the string holding it up (he got a stab in the foot for that) cascaded down her shoulders and to the middle of her back. Normally she would either have it in a ponytail or a plait to keep it out of her face, never once considering getting it cut.

_And when it sails up through the air_

_more beautiful than any prayer_

_this power can right all wrong_

_and it will always thrill the ear_

_of those who have the power to hear_

_the magic of a song_

Now it was her eyes that confounded her; wolf eyes some called them, with the yellow glare piercing one's soul if you got close enough to her. No other orc or even half-orc had the eyes she had-maybe it was the gods' idea of a joke: since her skin already makes her freak why not throw in wolf eyes, she could feel Bahamut admonish her.

Her eyes earned her the nickname Einn Ulfur, Lone Wolf, from the locals.

_There's a strength inside us_

_that tells us wrong from right_

_becomes a song inside us_

_to chase away the night_

By the end of her singing, she made it to the village. It was still midday so there were not a lot of people about, what harvest time being near and going about their own life. Xena frequented the village a lot, so no one really balked at the half-orc heading straight for their elders with a slight smirk on her face. The elders consisted of three female halflings; Shaena Underbough, Portia Tosscobble, and last and certainly not the least Lavina Goodbarrel. Lavina was the eldest of the three and was the first to welcome Xena into the village with open arms, even offering her a place to stay in her home after her banishment from Paladins.

"Ah! And there she is!" Elder Lavina crowed. "Merle! You owe me a pint!"

Merle, husband to Lavina chuckles. "Aye I never should wager against Ulfur, especially against you love."

"The bandits are no more." Xena reports, placing the bag of holding to the ground and pulling out all the goods and other useful things for the elders and village to use. "They will not be bothering you a moment longer, and I have found some trinkets and the like for you all."

Lavina raises an eyebrow at the goods. "For bandits going after a small village like ours, makes one wonder why they even bother with all this shit."

"Them swords will be of help for certain." Shaena says, watching the pile of weapons grow. "Heaven knows our people need them when you go off into the world again, I must say again how much we appreciate your help, luv."

"Mmm." Portia mumbles, placing her pipe next to her knitting project before getting up to inspect the goods. "Plus Jeorge will be getting more than enough supplies for the winter with these, did you find your own trinkets to take?"

Jeorge being the head halfling of the traveling group that goes sell and buys supplies in the nearest cities.

Xena presents the bag of holding to them with a smirk. "Those bandits' leader somehow got his hands on this, it is enough for me to-"

"That pretty bag is not enough of a reward for what you have done Ulfur !" Portia interrupts, frowning up at her. "Shaena may just let you do that, but I and many others will draw the line if we must! I am sure there is enough gold for you to take."

With that said accompanied by a sound of offense from the other lady, Shaena picks up a rather large sack of what is clearly gold and places it in a bemused Xena's hand. Shaena, though the youngest, is the most strict of the three and much more wary of strangers; when Xena first arrived in the village after months on her own after banishment Shaena was very hesitant to lend a hand to the creature that limped it's way to their little village with nothing but the armor and weapons on her person, Lavina swooped onto Xena before the other two could say anything and the next thing they knew they had a mean, green, fighting being who protected the village and provided help for others.

"Jeorge will be heading for the city early in the morning, best get cleaned and well-rested for the trip." Lavina informs Xena, picking up what looks like a bottle of fancy wine.

Xena smiles at the ladies, giving them a nod before heading for Lavina's townhouse to do just that. Many of the halflings who live in the village greet her as she passes by, or give their thanks as she left.

The next morning as she ate the last of her second breakfast, Xena Sharptooth was ready for the road along with Jeorge. It took nearly a day to reach the city and Xena slipped a gold to Jeorge in thanks as she left for the nearest tavern for a late dinner and sees if there were any jobs for her to do.

The Hanging Man was a dwarf-owned tavern, so the place looks more made of stone than wood. But with how many brawls and fights started here, the owner was pretty smart to not have many things made of wood. A large fire pit where many types of meat were being cooked in the middle of the tavern sizzled through the air and made Xena's mouth water. She could almost taste that goat leg she had been eyeing as she entered.

One of her favorite meats in the world before her and obtaining the bag of holding? Maybe the old lizard was onto something.

"Hello!" a bright-eyed elf wench greets from over the booth with a smile. "Welcome to the Hanging Man! My name is Amelia, how may I help you?"

"Leg of goat and a pint of ale." Xena orders, taking a seat.

"You mean lamb?" she asks with a raised eyebrow.

Xena gave it back. "No I mean that goat leg you have in the fire pit."

Amelia looks over to the fire pit before shaking her head. "I am sorry but that is for a customer-"

"Actually it is for her." a soft familiar voice beside from beside her. "Please get it for her."

Xena's whole body freezes at the voice. _Are you fucking kidding, you lizard!_

_A light purr was her reply._

"Three years away and I still know one of your weaknesses, Xena. Never understood your taste for goat over a lamb but to each their own."

From the corner of her eye she watched as the halfling woman climbs onto the stool beside her, her dirty blond hair tightly braided, complexion darker than the usual halfling with a big scar across the side of her face along with other, smaller scars, and of course wearing armor representing gold, silver, and blue of Bahamut.

"Oh like your weakness isn't chicken wings?" Xena mutters, tapping the booth waiting for her drink.

"Oooh don't remind me, I haven't had those in months!" the Halfling woman laughs.

Thankfully Xena didn't have to wait long as her pint arrived along with the goat leg... though it looks magnificent and just asking to be devoured.

"What brings you here Lady Kima?" she asks, sipping her ale. "Don't you and those dumb-asses have to keep Emon protected since you failed that last time around...? Also, well done on that."

"What? Can I not wonder about my vacation?" Lady Kima asks with a small smirk completely ignoring Xena's comment.

"Not when you have Lady Allura waiting for you at home." Xena was quick to reply.

Lady Kima's dark complexion became darker as she clears her throat looking around nervously. "She is busy with her own things and I am not here to talk about such things. I am here for you though."

"Oh? What happened? Is there something else The order wanted to accuse me of?" She asks rolling her eyes. "Did I throw Timmy down the well?"

"No Xena this doesn't have anything to do with them and more of a personal matter." Lady Kima sighs. "I was given a vision... a dark one."

Xena turns her head to Lady Kima, showing that she was paying attention. It wasn't really all that surprising that paladins got visions or messages from Bahamut, it was just rare. So when one says they got a vision, you listen.

"I saw darkness taking root beneath Kraghammer, the dwarven city northeast of Emon in the Cliffkeep Mountains. I have been hiring a couple of mercenaries to accompany me into the mines and into the Underdark, and I want you to join me." Just as she finished the sentence Xena choked back her drink.

Coughing a bit, wiping her mouth with her arm Xena looks over at Lady Kima in shock. "Okay first off you owe another ale, second of all wherein all your vision did it say 'It's dangerous to go alone, bring the half-orc that your order banished years ago!' like seriously Kima."

"Xena, the Order has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with my visions and they certainly have nothing to say about who I bring with me. Besides, in my vision; within the darkness, I saw a figure of a wolf within it, guiding me through the caves of the deep."

There was a silence between the two.

"And the last murmurs I have heard here and in neighboring villages, that there is a half-orc wondering the area, helping the less fortunate, caring for those in need with the strength of ten men and eyes like a wolf, they call her Einn Ulfur... Lone Wolf, Now I wonder, would such a person does not help her old mentor in her quest to suppress the darkness from taking hold in this world?" Lady Kima asks, gently placing an object beside Xena's hand.

Xena looks down at the object, taking a deep breath as she stares at her the most precious thing that was taken away from her, her holy symbol. The lizard in her head purrs comfortingly, encouraging her to do what is right and help her Lady Kima.

Reaching over she picks up the symbol, grasping tightly to it as she feels the vibrating purrs in her head transfer slowly from her head down her body and into the item in her hand.

Xena sighs. "So, Kraghammer huh?"

Lady Kima smiles.


	3. Chapter 1 - Glass and Bone Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently, no one is doing a Vox Machina OC storyline which blows my mind but I think with the cartoon coming along soon that we will finally get the fanfics they and I have been waiting for till then it is my turn to ROLL!

**Chapter 1 – Glass and Bone**

**Part 1**

**_H_** _ow the hell did I_ _wind up_ _here?_ Xena wonders, hiding in the darkness as the duergar of the deep marches past her thankfully not noticing her. _Oh yeah, Lady fucking Kima and the fucking dragon whores!_

Xena grips her holy symbol in one hand, now attached to a leather string around her neck in comfort as she thinks about how she got here; the group Lady Kima and her formed had run into the mines, almost getting arrested by the dwarves of Kraghammer only to run into abominations and creatures who have never seen the light of day attacking them left and right and then the bloody duergar ambushed them.

Attempting to save Lady Kima, she took a blow that had her pushed into a harsh moving river, down a waterfall, and going unconscious. When she awoke she had no idea where she was, and the map Lady Kima had given to her before the ambush started, was destroyed.

For what has felt like weeks in the caves, Xena searched in hopes to find Lady Kima and mayhaps her comrades. Only to find bodies and the armor of her old mentor in a pile about to be discarded in a stream of lava.

Despite wanting nothing more than to take her blade and shield and kill as many duergar bastards as she could before her own death, she knew that she needed to take the armor and bring it back to the surface so that the Order knew what has happened to Lady Kima, especially the Lady Allura, she above all deserves to know what happened to her.

So with a heavy sigh and heart, she took the armor, putting it into the bag of holding, and began her journey to getting the hell out of this nightmare and hopefully make it to the outside.

Though the more she became lost in the dark, the more writings she drew on the walls in case others ever find themselves lost... or her body.

Xena now sits against a wall chewing on the very last of her jerky, keeping her eyes on the shadows around her. She cannot fathom how long she has been down here and gods she began to understand why her... why orcs left the underground and took on the sunlight just to be away from this cage. Being a half-orc, one doesn't stop hearing the horrid stories of how the orcs came to the world nor how they should have stayed in the earth and never come out.

Xena herself has never come across an actual Orc willing to talk to her so she really didn't know whether they were as barbaric as people make them out to be or they were simply clans living on the earth minding their own business. Though from the way her own human mother abandoned her in a garbage heap as a babe, one can only assume how horrible they are.

Besides the point, she needed to get off her green ass and get back to the surface before she starts contemplating if dwarf meat is edible to her palate... and that was a question that was sneaking into her mind quite lately or she would be if it weren't for the brown bear in armor sniffing at her hair grumbling... wait-

"... What?" she mumbles in shock looking up at the bear with wide eyes.

The bear replies with a huff as if it to was surprised to see her in the shadows and yet he continues to sniff at her hair and forehead, nudging a bit with its wet nose as she tries to comprehend what was before her. Bears were not found in the deep caves, in fact, this particular bear was more of a woodsy bear than a cave bear plus the armor gave away that it was not an ordinary one.

Slowly, despite her brain yelling at her 'no touchy!' Xena places a hand into the fur gently, feeling the warmth coming from this being, gently caressing the softness that nearly brought a tear to Xena's eyes as she welcomes it. The bear didn't seem to mind and even seem to nudge her gently as if encouraging her to pet him more.

In the last shred of her sanity, she gave the bear a hug. However when her hand felt stone Xenas to her hand and sees a familiar face made of stone.

"Lady Kima?!" she exclaims.

"Is my burning foot giving me hallucinations or is there someone hugging Trinket?" an unfamiliar voice asks, snapping Xena into focus as she backs further away from the bear and takes out her sword that she spells to flame it, and her shield float in front of the bear to protect him from whoever was there.

"Whoa! Flaming sword!?"

"Holy shit!"

"I cast mage armor!"

"I get my gun at the ready!"

"I have my arrow aiming straight at the figure beside my darling Trinket!"

"Hey hold on hold on they don't look like a dwarf right?"

"Wait!"

_**What does Vox Machina See** _

_They see a scarred, jumpy, and half-starved orc or half-orc woman standing at the ready to attack anyone who came near the bear or her with her flaming sword. Standing at 5'11, rather small for a half-orc, green skin and armored though it was covered in blood and gunk from the things she has been killing for the last few weeks. What you will probably notice the most about her was her yellow eyes that remind Keylith of the wolves that lived in her forest when she was a child. There is also a holy symbol hanging from her neck that was of Bahamut that they found back in the camps that Lady Kima and perhaps she left behind._

"Wait that symbol around her neck!" a sweet voice stops her friends from attacking.

Blinking Xena squints her eyes and stares at the people in front of her; three half-elves, two gnomes, a human man (and a partridge in a pear tree!) and they seem to be carrying a stoned dwarf and followed by a mind flayer that had a mettle helmet on his head.

Looking to the bear she asks. "I assume you are with them then?"

Surprisingly the bear nods making Xena smile a little before looking back to the group, not really relaxing but cast the fire spell off her sword and put the sword away as her shields float back to her harness on her back.

"That was actually cool."The Gnome lady comments with a smirk on her face as she walks forwards. "I'm Pike Trickfoot."

Xena gives a long stare at the smaller stoned figure attached to the bear for a moment before looking down to the Gnome and slowly kneel down to the woman. "My name is Xena, Xena Sharptooth, would that stone figure... is it the Lady Kima?"

"Uhhhhh." Pike looks back to the statue that was tied in rope. "Yes, we had a run-in with basilisk back in the Emberhold-"

"Where was she?" Xena interrupts.

"She... she was in the prison, being-"

"She was being tortured by the duergar but we finished him off real good-" the male Gnome comes in sounding rather boastful to Xena's ear.

"... You mean to tell me that while I searched all over these caverns and even that bloody castle she was in there the whole time." Xena could feel her blood boiling, she had searched that fucking castle from top to bottom not once finding Lady Kima and these... people who look like they have only been in the caves for a couple of days... just happen upon her by chance!?

"You went in there alone... and survived?" This time it was the male half-elf who asks this question as he hisses in pain, cringing as he leans on the Dragonborn statue.

"You would be fucking surprised how amazing one can be without other people around especially when you smell like brimstone and blood," she comments before looking over the elf himself. "Though I think you are halfway there."

"Look right now we just got out of a mess at the stronghold and we need a place to hide and heal." The red-headed elf speaks up. "I just made a fake terrain that only lasts an hour so."

Xena nods, getting up from her kneeling position to stand beside the bear, and once again reaches out to pet it. "Yes well, I would like Lady Kima to come back for sure the old lizard knows how much shit she owes me."

"Old lizard?" Pike mutters looking at the others who shrug.

"So, you all are?" she asks as she begins to untie the stoned Lady Kima from the bear, Trinket's body.

This time it was a human man with white hair who stepped up to the plate while everyone else began to settle down.

"I am Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III." he introduces himself.

_(yes I remembered and pronounced it all!)_

Xena blinks at the names before turning back to the stoned Lady Kima and gently placing her on the ground before collecting the rope and giving it Pike who was still beside her.

"You know Pike, this is Scanlan Shorhalt, Vax'ildan, his twin sister Vex'ahlia, the stoned Dragonborn is Tiberius Stormwind he is a Dragonborn but was disguised as the Duergar dwarf god when he was petrified, we do have another companion but he was taken by the queen of the duergar he is Grog Strongjaw, I don't suppose have you seen a goliath barbarian wandering around?" He finishes look over to Xena as he sits down while she took all the information in.

She shakes her head and states "Have been seeing are those duergar bastards, abominations and even a couple of ogres."

"Those abominations wouldn't happen to be creatures sown together with other parts and look hideous as shit?" Scanlan asks nervously.

"That would be them." she nods.

"Shit." was his reply.

"And I suppose the mind flayer behind you is an ally of sorts cause if not you should get your weapons." Xena nods to the noodle face behind them.

"Oh no, that is Clarota!" Keylith explains smiling at him. "He is an outcast and is trying to free his people from whatever is controlling them."

Xena raises an eyebrow not believing it a second. "Uh-huh sure so since he hasn't been gorging himself in your brains and that makes him an ally?"

Scanlan goes to open his mouth but pause before closing his mouth and turning to look at the others.

"Gods you paladins!" Vax sighs exasperated "Look as we told Lady Kima we have accordance with Clarota, whether or not he turns against us is not an option right now for we are in deep shit and need all the help we can get. So please if you are joining us, just let it be."

"Plus you are an orc! how do we know you won't betray us! For all, we know you could be working with the Druergar!" Keylith asks crossing her arms and frowning at Xena as if she was offended that she would say such a thing about the mind flayer.

Silence fell as everyone who wasn't stoned or Xena turned to look at the red haired with astonishment.

The piercing yellow eyes made Keylith wilt a bit as Xena stares down at her. "Well first off redhead, in case you were deaf for a few minutes there I know Lady Kima, that alone should put your mind at ease or the fact that your bear companion hadn't ripped my head off at first sniff."

"But how does a half-orc become a paladin?" Percy wonders out loud. "No offense but I have never heard of such a thing."

"Neither have we." the twins say synchronized.

Xena stiffens a moment before shaking it off. "Ask the Order of Bahamut though after they banished me I can only guess they got rid of any evidence of my existence in the order."

"You were banished?! Why?" Pike asks.

"By pretty much what you all said; I'm an orc in the eyes of some of the Order and the thought of such a thing being a captain or being a knight of Bahamut just stains their beds at night with fright. So I was banished, I am only here cause Lady Kima who was my mentor and friend has asked me to join in her quest to get rid of an evil entity somewhere here." She explains.

"And how are you here and was not with Lady Kima in Emberhold?" Keylith asks suspiciously.

"When we were ambushed, I placed myself in front of Lady Kima from a blow to the head, unfortunately, I slipped and found myself in a rushing river hurdling down a waterfall. Came to... some time ago, I have been trying to find Lady Kima ever since, however, every rock and cranny here looks the same and after my attempt at Emberhold well let us just say I never want to enter a cave ever again if I survive this."

she finishes as she gets up, she turns to the others. "Do what you must, I will take care of Lady Kima."

Xena picks up her stoned companion takes her to a corner where places her friend, kneels down and begins concentrating on her restoration spell as everyone sat down and went from debating with each other, and the more she heard, the warier she was becoming of them. It did help though that Trinket the bear sat next to her keeping her warm as she focused on her symbol.

"So we have some time, let's regroup." the human, Percy tells the others with a sigh.

"I think we should probably-" Vex gets interrupted by Keylith.

"Wait, here's what I am afraid of!" she says. "If we sleep we could lose Grog's trail. He could be nearby right now!"

"We're not much use to anyone right now." He points out to the rest of the group.

"Let's just make a decision right now to leave Grog and continue on." Scanlan suggests.

Xena loses focus.

"What?!" Keylith exclaims.

"No!" Pike shouts frowning at her fellow gnome.

He shrugs giving them a grin as he says. "Let's just forget about him, he was a good friend-"

"What?!" Vex looks at him wide-eyed.

"We'll have a toast to him." he continues.

The Girls frown at the gnome. "Scanlan!"

"We'll sing about songs of his memory!" he adds. "Within a few days, we'll forget he ever existed."

"You are shitting with us right!?" Keylith asks as if praying she was right.

Percy sighs. "Scanlan, no one else wants to go to a whore house with you. You'll be going to whorehouses alone."

Scanlan thinks for a moment, crossing his arms before shrugging. "Alright, fine."

Vax looks to their new guest to see her staring wide-eyed at the lot of them looking a bit gobsmacked While Trinket, as if embarrassed by them looks away from Vox Machina, staring at one of the walls.

He almost sighs out loud. "Great first impression Scanlan, she thinks we are horrible beings."

The group froze and look over to her wide-eyed as Pike goes over to her.

"No Xena pay no mind to Scanlan! he jokes-"

"Actually-" he was interrupted by a smack to the back of the head by Vex.

"Really just if he ever says anything, just ignore him please." Pike pleads to look up at her.

Apparently, gnomes have the best puppy eyes in the world cause Xena could feel herself soften a bit before giving a wary glare at Scanlan before returning to her spell though she had a feeling she will not get around to it with this lot.

"I may have a suggestion." Vax raises a hand looking at his sister. "My foot hurts, but I'm not too bad how is everyone else?"

She sighs. "I'm okay."

"We could go look." He tells them, looking to the others.

"Or maybe I can use my tracking and see if I can catch a scent? Grog does smell." She proposes.

"I can use my beast sense; that is one more thing I can still do, I could theoretically, we could use Trinket." Keylith throws in another suggestion.

"We need to undo the stone that has taken over Tiberius and Kima." Vax reminds them.

"We have basilisk blood so maybe I can synthesize a potion?" Percy thinks out load looking through his bag.

Xena shakes her head and tells him. "You use basilisk stomach acid, not its blood."

He pauses in his search to look over at her. "Really?"

She nods. "A halfling village in the mountains had a problem with a basilisk nest, they always keep it on hand for in cause someone was petrified. I am just sorry I didn't take a few potions when I got rid of the problem."

"Well, dammit." He cursed, placing his pack down.

Pike walks over to Tiberius and casts Greater Restoration on him before anyone could say anything else.

Tiberius going from the moment in the heat of combat where he felt his muscles intensify and tensing up not answering to his command as he looked angrily at a series of duergar that have just been blown up by a fireball, to cold taking him over and as the cold fades he was suddenly now in the center of a gargantuan cavern surrounded by all of his friends.

Xena watches as the stoned form of their friend fades through the stone.

"Tiberius!" Keylith cries in happiness bringing him into a hug.

"Good job Pike!" Vex hugs Pike.

"I was so worried about you!" Scanlan says in sarcasm.

"Or we could cast a spell, that also works well." Percy mutters.

"I didn't know if that was going to work!" Pike says.

Xena just gives up altogether on concentrating the spell and simply leans against Trinket, giving his ear a scratch as she watches the group.

"What the hell is going on?" the Dragonborn in dwarf disguise asks looking around himself. "Whoa, what happened to all the other little dwarves, and who is this half-orc lady?"

"Oh, you don't have to do the accent anymore." Scanlan says waving his hand at his friend.

Vex winces as his voice echos. "You probably should keep your voice down Tiberius."

"This is Xena, she apparently is a companion to Lady Kima." Vax answers the question nodding to her.

"Are you stuck like this?" Scanlan asks looking a the dwarf.

"No, I could change back anytime I want, but I really like how I look." Tiberius says this as checks himself out.

Everyone laughs while Xena smirks as she leans back against the wall becoming thoughtful for a second thinking about why her spells working.

"Are we going to rest?" Pike asks the others.

"I think we should." Percy says looking to the others.

"Wait what about Kima?" Scanlan points out. "It looks like our friend there is about to pass out soon so I do not think she will be able to be of any help to Kima... no offense."

"None was taken." She mutters. "Really I think I am out of mojo right now and if you could help me Lady Pike I will return the favor somehow.

"Oh just Pike will do Xena and of co-"

"We have to find Grog!" Keylith shouts.

"Shush!" everyone hisses back.

"I know we have to find Grog!" Vex whispers to her fellow half-elf, gripping her shoulders. "But we have no spells! If we do find him, we can't do anything!"

'They just keep going in circles don't they?' she thinks feeling the old Lizard nod in befuddlement. It made Xena snort, Bahamut; the Platinum Dragon is being befuddled by a group of insane individuals! Oh, what the Order would do.

"Clarota, What do you think we should do?" Tiberius asks.

This made Xena open her eyes and raise an eyebrow at the dwarf before turning her head to the mind flayer just waiting to see what it would say.

Said mind flayer is currently staring at the statue of Kima making Xena tense a bit as he turns his gaze to her and there's a brief bead of thought behind his eyes and the voice sinks into everyone's minds making Xena shiver a bit not liking another person in her head.

"We may be able to leave her here for safekeeping." He thinks to them.

Tiberius scoffs while everyone else shook their head seeing the though tired-looking half-orc glare at the mind flayer.

"Then you leave me behind as well, I would love to witness the look on Lady Allura's face when you tell her abandoned Lady Kima for a mind flayer." she snarls at the lot of them.

"We are not abandoning anyone," Percy assures her. "She gave us this quest and we will see it through, be Lady Kima petrified or otherwise."

"You know I have heard of Half-Orc intimidation from others but I do not think I have ever seen eyes as piercing as yours Lady Xena." Vax comments, tilting his head at her.

His sister looks at him with an odd look as Xena closes her eyes again, not relaxed but still resting her eyes.

"Perks." she simply says.

"I knew we were going to say that! A different option. Oh, and thank you Pike!" Tiberius hugs the little gnome.

"Your welcome Tiberius!" she smiles in glee as she returns the hug.

"If you insist on bringing her and the Half-orc, then we should do it soon. We should not be leaving anything behind." the mind flayer hisses in their thoughts. "Traces of our passage."

"Hey, Pike mind just giving me the story of how you came to be here quick?" Xena asks the gnome. "Before you unstone Lady Kima."

"Oh! Yes sorry, Xena!" Pike apologizes before running over and giving her the lowdown as Vax looks over to Clarota.

"Where did your kin take our big friend?" He demands.

Clarota thinks for a second and says. "It was not my kin that took him but the duergar. If anything, I imagine he might be residing within the infernal city, though if they've taken him elsewhere I do not know the way of the ask-skins."

"But Kima does." Tiberius says looking back to the stoned halfling.

"We should wake her up." Vex nods.

"Pike can yo-"

Pike of course was already on it after she told Xena everything that had gone down from Kraghammer, Xena scoffed at the dwarves' less than helpful information on their behalf, from attempting an attack on the camp to reaching Emberhold and getting Lady Kima to the battle in the hold to now.

"Huh and here I was worrying over what I was going to do when I was out of food." she mumbles.

Pike laughs before touching Kima's shoulder.

"No, wait Pike!" Xena surges forward grabbing the gnome and making her shield fly off her back and in front of her and Pike.

Kima, who is in mid-battle with her greatsword in the air, as soon as her flesh returns to her, she finishes her swing and it does bang into Xena's shield and deflects the blow. Xena can see Kima for a second is panting, slowing to normal breathing as she looks around herself.

"Easy easy." Vax puts his hands out to her.

"Calm down!" Pike says.

She throws the blade to the ground and repeats. "I am so sorry!"

"It's okay! You were mid-swing I get it we are fine Xena got in between us before any damage could happen!" Pike explains smiling up at Xena.

What Xena didn't realize is that Scanlan has dubbed her his new best friend for saving his beloved Pike.

Kima reaches around and pulls her symbol of Bahamut from her around her neck and just clutches it for a second before going frozen and slowly with wide eyes looks back at Xena. "Xena?"

Xena, knowing her mentor for many years can hear the crack in her voice. "Hey? Didn't I tell you it was dangerous to go a-"

She was interrupted by the halfling Paladin tackling her to the ground.

"Ooof!" she grunts as her backside slams into the ground.

"Oh thank Bahamut, thank him and every god in the plains of existence!" She whimpers gripping the half-orc tightly. "I saw you fall into the river I saw-"

"Hey shh." Xena slowly hugs her old mentor back. "I am alright... sort of not much worse for wear but still alive and kicking."

"Well, I guess this proves that Xena was telling the truth." Scanlan voices, looking over to a frowning Keylith.

Lady Kima steps away from Xena smiling up at her before looking over to the others, doing her best to wipe the tears. "What happened?"

"Um." Vex begins, still recovering from the near attack on Pike's life and the sweet reunion between Xena and her. "You were turned to stone, the king got killed, the queen took Grog, we don't know where."

"And Clarota was really helpful to us." Scanlan adds looking at both Xena and Kima.

"Actually, Clarota got you out of that castle alive." Vex says with a grin at Kima.

Kima and Xena turn around and glares at Clarota briefly with a look of confusion and mistrust while Clarota just slowly shrugs as if he too didn't know what the fuck he was thinking.

"You honestly would not be here if it weren't for the illithid." Vax looks to Xena, she can only guess to say the proper name of the mind flayer. "It's true."

Kima glances at Vax and gives under her breath. "And there's a good chance none of us may be here if it gets its way down the road."

She straightens up and says a little louder. "Nevertheless, I thank you, it is good to know at least took one of their top champions down. The fact that the queen still exists is worrisome, as least what I seemed to gather she had the true reign over most of the duergar down here."

"What?" Keylith looks away from Xena to look at the halfling.

"Do you know where she would be at?" Tiberius asks.

"Where did she escape? How did she take him?" Kima returns looking at them.

"She disappeared with our goliath friend." Vax says.

"She bounced away!" Tiberius scoffs.

Vex suddenly gasps. "Oh my gosh. Wait did I Hunter's mark the queen?"

Vax nods. "Yes, you did."

"Did I?" she repeats looking at the others.

Everyone else nods or vocally affirm.

"I can use my Hunter's Mark to track her!" she exclaims smiling at everyone.

"You can?!" Scanlan asks excitedly as everyone cheers. "How long does it last and how does it work?"

"That was just 30 minutes ago." Vax says.

"I know, but we all have to rest." Scanlan nods over to Xena who now has crawled over to the slumbering bear and proceeded to cuddle it.

Vax and the others smirk in amusement at the scene before them, even Kima had to snort.

"Of course it is a beast she becomes best friends with." She mutters looking away.

"It maintains up to eight hours!" Vex notifies them.

Scanlan groans. "Eight hours? We have to rest!"

Pike nods in agreement. "Because we need to heal, I am pretty low."

"Um let us just say." Scalan nervously looks over to their cleric. "If my health was in the numbers I am at two."

Pike blanched at her fellow gnome.

Keylith waves her arms in the air. "Okay. Theory? Proposition? Proposal. What if we use your Hunter's mark, figure out where she is, get there, camp out nearby, tackle it in the morning?"

Vax shakes his head. "I think we should all rest up for a moment. I think Vex'ahlia and I should go out for an hour or two just to see which direction- I mean, they are not going to Emon."

"I've got Hunter's Mark! Just stay put, footless!" Vex scolds her brother, smacking his shoulder.

"Wait a minute what happened to your toe?" Tiberius asks in concern looking at Vax's foot.

"You're not stealth anymore. You got a busted foot, you're at disadvantage on everything." Scanlan tells his friend, was about to sit next to Pike when she rises from where she was sitting and makes her way to Xena to sit beside her.

"I was pretty awesome 30 minutes ago." He was saying to Tiberius. "Now I'm just slightly less awesome.

Xena snorts making Pike giggle.

"Can we at least heal you up, before you go?" Scanlan suggests.

"Yes just give us one second." Vex asks exasperated at her stubborn brother before she takes a moment and steps beyond the boundary of the illusion momentarily, closing her eyes and concentrating on that small blip of nature-based divine energy that she lent and grappled onto Queen Ulara with.

Vex recalls her face, and strangely her scent; In a weird way, the bestial nature of her connection with Trinket and nature, the scent is a very strong means of tracking and the scent of a duergar is a very terrible mix between salty brine and earth. She recalls the stronghold, she begins to see a trace where all of the sudden her path in the stronghold is fading and is cold. A new path has opened up in the center of the duergar city at the base of the stronghold.

It seems to have moved slightly in that direction, but she couldn't pinpoint where and is currently at rest somewhere in that vicinity.

"The city, they're close," Vex whispers to the others and begins explaining exactly where she is.

"Oh good, so we can sleep now?" Xena asks.

"I have a theory." Keylith speaks up.

"I guess not." Xena growls shoving her face into Trinket's tummy.

"I have a new skill that I've recently learned and was practicing a lot when I was with the Earth Ashari while we were gone for the past six months. They taught me the ways of the earth elementals."She explains.

"Oh, that's fun!" Tiberius comments with a smile.

Keylith becomes a little nervous as she says. "So, and as an earth- but I am still new at it."

"That's okay, we all start somewhere." Pike assures her friend.

Everyone did their best not to laugh out loud at Pike's oblivious comment.

"Thank you, Pike." Keylith says slowly.

"You're welcome." Pike smiles brightly at her.

"Thank you. I mean I am a little self-conscious about it still, but I can travel through earth." she continues.

"And pop up perhaps where she is?" Vex catches on.

"Ooh, like a little gopher." Tiberius says with a smile.

"All of us or just you?" Vex asks the important question.

Keylith shakes her head. "Just me, but I could get inside."

Vex sighs. "Well, but then you will be alone, surrounded by duergar and Grog."

"Well, I am not talking about right now." Keylith says. "If we do some sort of flanking thing."

"Well, it does sound useful." Vax says to her.

Percy agrees and looks thoughtful. "It is, it is going to be useful."

"I'm wondering if we can make a tunnel, though. I can theoretically—okay, theoretically we could rest and I would keep all of my spells and use all of my magic focus to tunnel us out, depending on how far we are going. We can do an underground approach." She finishes.

"If I may." Xena holds up an arm. "We are alright underground, we would be making a cave within a cave and after being lost here for... months and I can only guess you do not know your ups and down here that we would all either get lost or end up in a lava pit so ya that is all I am say."

"Yeah, I agree with the no landing in lava thing." Scanlan nods not looking all for it.

"Perhaps, but concretely, right now we need nappies." Vax declared.

"Yeah." Keylith sighs.

"Let's nap." Vex agrees.

"Let's sleep." Percy commands about to lay down.

"But what if they leave while we sleep?" She asks worryingly.

This time Xena didn't hold back a loud growling groan. "SOMEONE SHUT UP THE FUCKING ELF AND LET US SLEEP!?"

Kima who had moved to sit beside Xena and Pike places a hand on her back and soothes her. "Shush Xena, steady."

"And what are we going to do if we find them?" Percy asks as he starts to begin to feel the same as Xena as he looks over to Keylith.

"I think we will be fine because she needs to rest as well. We hurt her pretty badly." Vex reminds her.

"I think it is safe to assume she's brought Grog back to her seat of power. Why would she go anywhere else? She's at her strongest where she is." Vax says before both the twins realize that she was not even listening to them.

"I am listening." Percy assures the twins. "I think they're staying."

"We are going to rest." Scanlan tells Keylith giving her a look before he to looks for a place with Pike and Xena.

"Okay. Alright." Keylith sighs again.

Xena waits in silence for her to change her mind again and if she did, Bahamut be damned she will use her antler crown thingy as freakin eye-poking weapons.

"We got to sleep, Keylith," Vex says. "We got to sleep."

"I know, you're right I see what you are saying but we need to..." Pike began to say.

"Grog will be fine." Scanlan says.

Pike points at Scanlan. "He at a two!"

"I'm so mad at him! why's he get stolen?" Keylith pouts, crossing her arms.

Kima comes over, puts her hand out a little bit, and says. "It's alright, he's a strong one he can handle himself. If I could survive what I've been through and if Xena can survive down here, he can do far better than that. Rest is good, I think we need to take some time, discuss our plan of attack, our current direction, and decide on how we'll move forward.

She glances briefly over to Clarota, who's now further back towards the wall just sitting in this meditative state.

She looks back to the others. "So, let's rest."

"Brilliant idea." Percy agrees with a smile.

Vax puts up a hand. "One last thing before we lay our heads down for the night. Pike, do you have any salve or anything you could help me put on my foot or could your god help with my little toe?"

"I could help you with some natural mediciney stuff, maybe." Keylith volunteers.

"It stings a bit." He says looking down at his burnt foot.

"You can do it Pike!" Vex cheers as the gnome cleric gets up leaving Xena and the bear napping away.

"I'm ticklish." Vax warns with a grin.

"Is there any way I could assist?" Keylith asks.

Kima nods to a sleeping Xena. "If you can get sleeping beauty over there to wake up she could probably help."

Pike shakes her head. "No from the way she looks and clutching Trinket right now she needs all the rest she can get, we have only been here for a week or so, you two have been down here months."

Kima lets out a huff of air before saying. "Aye that we have but I think with his foot you need all the help you can get."

Pike pauses for a moment before letting out a small sigh and nods.

Kima turns and slaps Xena on the ass she made her bolt away from her fluffy pillow.

"Mother of fuckers!" Xena exclaims making everyone snort in amusement.

"I like her." Scanlan says smiling.

"Xena, they need help in healing Vax's foot." Kima said calmly in the face of a snarling Xena.

"Unless you are too tired in which we will totally understand." Pike throws in biting her lip a bit.

Xena's furious face turns into a sleepy one when her eyes rest on Pike, blinking slowly before looking over to the male elf who looks up at her with a hesitant smile. She sighs before nodding to the gnome and makes her way over to the man before kneeling down and taking his hand.

"My goodness Lady Xena." Vax exclaims. "We've only just met!"

"Shut up." she simply says closing her eyes in concentration as she begins to hum.

Vax blinks staring at her as she completely ignores him and wonders what song she was humming.

"If we're going to rest, it doesn't hurt to try." Pike says to the others walking over to Vax

Vax lifts up his foot near his sister's face with a grin.

Automatically response of disgust on Vex's face proved that Vax did it on purpose. "Why do you keep putting your foot up near me?!"

Keylith giggles as she begins building positive chi... Percy is getting his bed ready for rest while Vex kept an ear out for anyone to come near and Tiberius looks through his sack for his food portions to snack on.

Scanlan sighs getting up to walk over next to Pike. "I'm going to try and inspire you to help with the healing if that is alright."

"Please do." Pike replies with a grin before looking back at Vax's foot.

All the healers convene, Scanlan begins to sing as Keylith lights some sage.

Wherever you go

whatever damage they've done

we will be right here waiting to heal you

No matter what hit points you take

or how your foot breaks

we will be right here

waiting for you.

As Pike takes the healing energy she has gathered from her own nature-based casting, she infuses the healing spell. As she finishes the spell, she can see where the mostly-gone second small toe has grown to a full toe and there is a small stub where the little one is.

"You've got a toe nubbin!" Vex coos jokingly.

"Hey man, we got a little stub." Pike comforts Vax. "A little bit, it'd gonna take time, that was just a little manicure that we did real quick."

With that Xena let go of Vax's hand and looks over at the group. "Can I sleep now or are there others to heal or is the redhead going to make us go in circles about not sleeping again?"

Keylith huffs in offense while everyone else shakes their heads, with that answer she gets up, and instead of going to her fluffy pillow she chooses a corner away from everyone and lays on the cold hard floor.

Scanlan walks over to Kima and says. "Lady Kima, I think we're all going to take a rest and you as well, correct?"

Kima looks over her shoulder to Xena then looks back and nods. "I think I should."

He nods before giving her a look. "We can trust you while we're all asleep not to do anything to any of our companions, correct?"

"If you're worried about the mind flayer, I'll be keeping an eye, but nothing beyond that." she reassures him. "Remember: he has to make the side-step, the wrong step before I take action. Trust and know that if I were to strike a blow, it's at his own poor choice and actions."

"That first part of what you said rhymed," Tiberius says tiredly, smiling at her.

Looking at Kima Scanlan can see she is legitimately concerned about Clarota, but also understands that at this moment, it has not done anything to necessarily draw her blade.

"Lady Kima, Clarota, may I suggest you take the first watch, I would have had Xena join you Lady Kima but she appears to have gone to dreamland." Vax says with a smirk.

There was a silence between the two of them as they look from Vax to each other and back.

"Oh my god, what if they start fucking?" Scanlan whispers super quietly to the others.

That got everyone biting their lips though thank goodness Kima and Clarota didn't hear them or there would be a very dead gnome bard within seconds.

"So it's going to be that sort of evening, excellent." Percy says to himself with an amused grin on his face.

(Liam looks to the readers with a grin and says "Rated M for mature.")

As Clarota's image shimmers and vanishes the last thing they hear is. "Should you insist."

As everyone starts following Xena's example and were all going to sleep, Kima's still sharpening her sword and she stops for a second to look up at everyone and says. "Everyone, I'm sorry you've lost your friend. If he lives, we shall find him."

"He will live." Vex says determinedly.

"And we will find him." Percy guarantees.

Scanlan looks doubtful but quickly changes his face when he sees Pike frowning at him.

"No, he will, Scanlan! You just calm down." She admonishes him.

Lady Kima continues. "But if they have indeed taken him prisoner and Emberhold is lost, there is only one place they would bring him: Yug'Voril."

Vex's eyes widen as she looks over to Pike. "With the dude with the black horn!"

"Considering the mess that you've made since entering their realm of living and work." Lady Kima smiles in amusement at the lot. "You'd make a great gift to their current standing demigod. If we aren't able to find him within the city, I think that may be the next place to look."

"Once again, are you afraid they're going to take him while we're asleep? Is this a genuine concern? Is this something we should move on now?" Keylith asks.

Kima is very thankful Xena was in deep sleep now or this redhead would have had a rock thrown at her by now and looking to Vex. "Not as long as you're keeping concentration, we should be fine."

"I am concentrating so hard." she says with a nod.

"We're busted up." he reminds Keylith again.

"There's legitimately nothing to be done." Percy says rubbing his face in genuine tiredness.

There's a softness that hits Kima's face and there is a bit of a quiver to her chin and she says. "The guilt I feel for unknowingly putting you all in danger for my sake is immense. It's not enough that I dragged Xena here with me, it's because of me and my actions that you even delved this far and nearly lost life and limb, merely at the behest of Allura and... I want you all to know that I appreciate it. I really, truly do."

Tiberius smiles. "That's great! If you can mention that to Allura, that'd be wonderful."

Kima stares at him for a moment before saying. "I would really appreciate it to speak to Tiberius."

He begins to mumble a spell and returns to his Dragonborn self. "I would really appreciate it if you mention that to Allura. I'm trying to get into her good graces and whatnot."

She chuckles a moment. "Alright. Allura is a good friend, well we've known each other for... gods, 15 years now. Since we defeated Jorgan, the Scourged Rider, together. But she has always had more of a political mind than I do, so, when we were both offered a seat on the council of Tal'Dorei and Emon she stayed, and I... I'm a woman of action, and I knew my destiny was out in the world."

"We share something in common, Lady Kima. I, too, have left my home and land because I did not want to sit on the council of Draconia. With blessings from my father and such, I gained ambassadorship on a mission for them, but really, just so I could-"

Her eyes have glazed over and are staring off into the distance.

"What about Xena?" Keylith asks narrowing her eyes at the sleeping figure in the dark corner of their corner. "How do you come across someone like her?"

Kima looks over her shoulder at the figure before looking back and a smile that actually reaches her eyes. "With all the luck in the world."

"She said that she was banished by your Order." Vex states. "If she was I am surprised that you would bring her along in this."

Kima's smile fades as she looks down at the greatsword. "Were it up to me, that woman over there would have been a knight and sister by my side, but... Bahamut has other plans for her I am certain-"

"What were her charges for banishment?" Scanlan asks suspiciously.

Kima sighs. "Some of the leaders of the order have.. charged her with the treason of murder but there weren't enough evidence and they had no choice but to choose banishment I myself do not have the full story on what happened since I was away but I swear by all I am and will be, Xena Sharptooth is a good woman and friend if you just give her a chance."

She looks back to Tiberius. "I will speak to Allura of your honor and deeds, Tiberius. We try and have drinks and swap stories every few months. She's a good one."

"Yes, I think so." Tiberius agrees with a smile.

She takes a moment to herself and looks at the rest of the group and says. "The cruel king, who dealt the final blow?"

"You took out a king?"

Everyone looks over to the voice and sees Xena had apparently awoken from her short nap and has placed herself beside Kima.

Vex immediately points to the male Gnome.

Scanlan clears his throat. "That would be the kingslayer, me."

"... Boy howdy." Xena gapes at the gnome.

"Lady Kima steps up and walks over to Scanlan and puts a hand on his shoulder and gives a stern look in the eye and shakes his shoulder, being a halfling she was not much taller than him.

"Good, the cruel king is down, and I thank you for that." she walks back to the little perch on the rock at the side of the wall and says. "He tried to break me, relish in his false superiority. Dragging hooks across my flesh, underestimating the will of a servant of Bahamut-"

"Are you congratulating us for being murderers? Is that what you're doing right now?" Keylith interrupts with a frown.

Xena was really not liking this woman. "Are you regretting killing a king who is torturing poor souls and making Lady Kima feel bad about it? Is that what you are doing because please do continue I would love to hear the story behind that."

Lady Kima lifts a hand to Xena, in other words telling her she got this and not to worry. "Murder and justice are two entirely different things and the deities of all good saw to it that this King's time was limited."

Keylith snorts. "Are you suggesting now that we control the wills of the deities?"

"No, but we enact them, as long as we work within your plans to keep us safe." Kima replies.

"I can look like them-"

"That's mighty bold and presumptuous of you." she says

The twins are staring at their fellow half-elf with a 'The fuck is wrong with you?!' while the others look around themselves nervously with the conversation.

"My life has been given to guidance of the platinum dragon, who has seen nothing but the positive direction for all of your species, mine and the rest of humanity, that exists in the material plane. You would do well to not disrespect one who looks out for you, even though you may not look up to him for guidance. The reasons these lands that you grew up in are safe and free, as much as they are, are because of the sacrifices of my brethren who came before me under his light and guidance. I am not saying you to worship him- each one has their own gods choice. I just say, show some respect."

"I do show respect, Lady Kima. I show respect when I feel that respect has been earned." she sneers.

"Keylith." Vex hisses.

"She's royalty, you have to understand." Tiberius says.

"Oh... great we have a princess in our mists." Xena mutters.

"We're all a bit cranky, maybe we should just turn in." Scanlan suggests nervously.

"I watched as they executed my companions, I thought I saw my dear friend here fall to her death in the waters! The wondrous men and woman who came down to these caverns at my side with my coin in their pockets, with the promise of justice. And they laughed as they cut their throats before me, hoping it would be able to crack me. It was Bahamut's strength that held me there." Lady Kima stood before the redhead, staring down at her.

Keylith clears her throat. "Lady Kima, I am not saying that what we are doing here is not just. I only wish that you understand- and I humbly thank you for your appreciation and thanks for coming down here to rescue you, but you are correct. We have lost a friend, someone with who we have been through a lot, way more than we have been with you. So, before we start boasting congratulations and you start thanking us, why don't you wait? And we'll see what happens when we all get out of here first."

Vex and Vax lean over to Keylith whispering harshly at their friend. "She's suffering from PTSD. Why are you poking the badger?!"

"Keylith! Maybe we should calm down and go to bed!" Vex adds.

Lady Kima takes a step forward towards Keylith and as they look up at her face, there's a tension, but they can see now that she stepped near into them, towards what little bit of light seems to cascade through the cavern, there are tears streaking down her face.

Pike was looking worriedly from Lady Kima to Keylith to the ever shaking Xena.

"They tried all they could to break me, but I knew my destiny would not end here. I have a destiny that does not end here." she says.

Pike pops out of nowhere and slowly hands her a handkerchief before walking away.

Percy decides to step in as he too eyes the other paladin who was now looking at Keylith like when Trinket got protective over Vex. "Lady Kima, as I'm sure you know, grief speaks before sense-"

"All I'm saying, Lady Kima, is that after what we've done and what we have been through and the lives and the blood that even I have on my hands, you had better be worth it."

Percy sighs. "Let us wait for worth and talk of might until we are reunited."

Lady Kima puts a hand up towards Keylith. "Child, let me explain to you why we are here. As while you may have stepped into the pretense of keeping me out of harm's way, there is a purpose that I and now all of us serve, here in the Underdark. Now, I've been on this journey for more than a year, traveling wherever the wind took me, finding where my gift would find an end to suffering, justice to the wicked, and comfort the downtrodden. I'd just returned from the frozen tundra northeast of these Cliffkeep mountains-"

"It was fucking cold." Xena says.

"Heading to meet with Allura, the same friend who brought you here." Lady Kima continues though throws a small smile at Xena before turning back to the others. "And my vision came to me, I'm sure you're familiar with visions. The great platinum dragon bestowed upon my humble self a dream. I saw an ancient vision of the great and terrible god of undeath himself: Orcus. His crimson, leathery skin and endless wings rumbling through the Abyss itself. He had chosen a champion, one that would unite the material world and the heart of the Abyss, bring a doorway of oblivion to our world."

Lady Kima sighs looking about the cavern itself. "He cut from his own head two of his terrible black horns, placing them upon the brow of this chosen warrior, his avatar to these realms, granting him power no mortal should ever have. I saw heroes, long forgotten, rise up to destroy this shadow champion, losing much in the ensuing battle. Loss, far more than you or I will ever know. The body of the avatar was burned away, but the horns of Orcus remained; Untouched by flame, blade, nor divine judgment. These keepers of the horns had a title that time has taken and the whereabouts of the artifacts that had been, thankfully lost as well!"

She turns back to the group looking at each and every one of them. "Until the next dream dispelled my confusion. I felt a crackling entity of immense power, who had discovered of the holding vaults, never meant to be found. This creature obsessed, spent all their attention to unlock the promised treasure within, and over time, they did. One of the two horns had found a new champion, one who now resides deeper within the Underdark here; One we've now known to be called K'varn. This one has united the illithid and the duergar alike under a banner of madness, expansion, and mockery of life. I've seen these experiments, as have you. This is what I came down here to dispose of, once and for all."

The halfling turns around and walks up beside Xena, placing a hand on her shoulder, shaking it in companionship. "I asked Xena to join me, and I hired some of the finest warriors in Kraghammer for this, all of whom have been slain or worse. That guilt weighs upon my soul, and this very quest, whoever this K'varn monstrosity, it holds the horn of Orcus upon its brow! My visions have told me that we must destroy it and must do so soon. If it had already unlocked the artifact's true potential, Kraghammer would be a ruin before even arrived! But it's only a matter of time. We must end K'varn and retrieve this horn and return it to the Tal'Dorei council to discuss how to seal it once more, hopefully for all of eternity."

"Your friend's loss is a terrible thing." Kima says to them. "But we will try to find and should we not, understand that his sacrifice was not in vain. For we're here not to save one but to save thousands, hundreds of thousands of lives if we succeed. So we sleep, we rest, we find your friend and we destroy this, this abomination, this anathema."

"Lady Kima, I only hope you do not eventually become what you fear so much... Goodnight" Keylith turns away, turning herself into a minx, and goes off in the corner and curl up in a corner.

"Sleep tight." Scanlan whispers.

Kima picks up her blade, sits back down, and goes back to sharpening her blade.

"That went well." Percy says laying back down.

"Pike, I'll cuddle you for warmth, if that would help?" Scanlan offers his fellow Gnome.

"It's already so hot in here with all the lava and stuff, I would just prefer to sleep alone I am sorry!" Pike says politely.

"That's fine, that is what I meant." He assures hiding his disappointment as the other shakes their head at him.

"Scanlan, I'm very cold." Vex says playfully at his friend.

Scanlan gives him a look as everyone chuckles. "You know what? We better let that foot heal. We better let it heal."

Vex giggles. "Trinket, go sleep with Vax."

Vax nods to his sister. "That's a good idea, come here, Trinky, Trink!"

Trinket looks from his former cuddle buddy as if asking if that is alright and Xena had to smile at the bear.

"Indeed, go to him he probably needs you more than I do, thank you though." She tells the bear.

"Can you speak to animals?" Pike asks.

Xena snorts. "No! no not even close but your bear seems like a very intelligent being plus it helps that he can use his body language as well."

Trinket seems to puff his chest at the compliment before making his way to Vax.

"Who wants nibbles?" He asks the bear taking out a few meat jerkies for the bear.

Trinket comes up and curls up next to Vax after eating the jerky.

The evening goes by, thankfully uneventful, Xena did not know what lay ahead for all of them but with everyone looking to the mind flayer more than Lady Kima herself Xena had no choice but to keep an eye out for herself and Lady Kima until otherwise.

Occasionally, everyone stumbles out of their rest, keep an eye out, the beacon still resides.


	4. Chapter 1 - Glass and Bone Part 2

**Chapter –** **Glass and Bone**

Part 2

From what Xena can imagine, a natural body sleep cycle that she's used to passes. A few begin to wake up before the others, as there is no daylight to ascertain whether it is day or night. Indeed who knows what it is that this point.

Just everyone nods and mumbles hello Vex's head snaps to the opening with wide eyes as she feels not only her Hunter's Mark fading but it was moving as well!

"I know where we need to go but we need to go now in that direction!" She tells the others.

"I think that is a perfectly reasonable thought." Percy agrees.

Xena looks over at him. "Man you are as fancy as fuck."

Percy blinks at her. "I think that is a compliment? Thank you?"

"Oh, it is just... dear old lizard man." She huffs before walking towards Lady Kima.

"I wish you wouldn't call him that." She tells her ex-pupil.

"Hey, I haven't heard from him about my names for him." She says rolling up her bedroll.

"Wait what." Scanlan comes up to them. "You hear voices?"

Xena sighs. "No Mr. Shorthalt I do not hear voices."

Kima tries to explain. "Xena here can sometimes commute with Bahamut the Platinum Dragon, it was a great blessing he bestowed upon her and was greatly honored for it."

Xena scoffs. "Yeah before they realized who their god was talking to a half-orc and not their own."

Kima frowns as Xena walks away stuffing her roll into the bag of holding and looks to the group.

"I don't suppose any of you have some food you can spare? I had the last of it before I met you lot." She asks.

Vex stops for a moment and thinks before giving a sigh. "Well, it was going to be for later since Grog has our bag of holding so.."

"Oh then in that case keep it." She tells Vex

Vex looks up in surprise, and Xena just shrugs back and says. "If you already have plans for it in case of emergency then don't waste it on me Vex'ahlia."

Xena is surprised when she smiles at her. "You are the first to get my name right and pronounced it correctly! Call me Vex!"

"And I am Vax, our names are a bit of a mouthful in the heat of battle." her brother adds as he walks by with a wink.

Xena smiles. "Ah I can only imagine trying to say 'Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III there's an ogre behind you!' right?"

There is complete silence in the cavern as everyone but Lady Kima slowly turns their head to Xena Sharptooth, even Keylith who was halfway casting Pass Without a Trace on the group gapes at her.

Xena feels the hair on the back of her neck raised as the group continues the stare. "What did I say his name wrong?"

"No." Pike stares up at Xena stunned. "In fact, you remembered his full name with no mistake whatsoever."

"Oh." She says then shrugs. "It's got a good rhythm to it."

"'It has a good rhythm' she says." Scanlan shakes his head.

Percy smiles at Xena with appreciation and nods. "But yes Percy will do nicely especially if there is an ogre behind me."

She grins at him. "So shall we go find your Grog, I can only imagine he is waiting to be rescued by you guys."

"We do seem to be saving him a lot." Pike says thinking about it. "But he is our friend and we wouldn't trade him for anything!"

"I would hope not." Xena replies with a smirk before turning to the entrance surprisingly with Trinket walking to her side.

"Trinket really likes her." Tiberius points out.

"Does your beast normally take to someone so well?" Lady Kima asks looking at their surprised faces.

"Well, Keylith and Pike for sure but it took the others a while for Trinket to warm up to..." Vex says feeling a little jealous of Trinket's attention to Xena but shakes it off cause she knows that Trinket was hers and she was his there was nothing that would separate them.

"Well." Lady Kima holds her blade over her shoulder. "I know not many animals that warm up to Xena that fast but I can only deduce that perhaps your... Trinket sees something in her that few others see."

Everyone had a thoughtful look on their faces before getting back to business.

"This suddenly turning into the Labyrinth." Vax says to the group as they began their way. "'Beyond the Goblin city... to take back the child you have stolen."

"You have no power over me!" Vex speaks dramatically.

Percy points over to Vex. "You remind me of the babe."

Xena chimes in with a grin knowing this story like the back of her hand. "What babe?"

Percy looks over to her and grins. "Babe with the power!"

"What power?" Pike asks.

"Power of voodoo!" He replies back

"Who do?" Vax wonders.

"You do!" Percy exclaims.

"Do what?" Xena lifts her arms in question.

"Remind me of the babe." Percy tells her.

"Guys!" Scanlan hisses at them. "Enough, we have to be quiet remember?"

The five of them look sheepish but still have little smiles on their faces.

"Yes as stealthily as possible so we don't alert the entire freaking camp." Vex gives them a look before giving way to sigh as she tries to kae it look like they were not around the area as much as possible. "My mark is gone but it in this direction so we go that way."

"We got Pass Without a Trace, so we should be alright." Percy says clearing his throat and follows suit.

"Gods I miss our Dust of Tracelessness." Vex grumbles as she realizes there was no branch or of any sort to sweep off their tracks. "Stupid Grog."

They prep up all their spells as Xena and Lady Kima take their swords out at the ready and continue to crest along the outskirts of the cavern wall at this point. Looking over they can see throughout the night, most of the fortress, currently- the lava fall that once contained it is completely cooled and is dark. It looks like their way of stopping the flow was to stop the entire magma fall. Who knows how much damage has been done, but currently the flow is halted and Xena can see now, there's a number of parties of duergar that are just wandering out, through the cavern, presumably in search for the group she was with.

"Damn ya'll make some cosmic damage... I like it." She observes the fortress with a grin.

"So technically, Lady Kima, we might be able to get back in eventually and get your weapon." Vex says to Lady Kima.

As she says that, Lady Kima grins to herself and says. "I would like that very much, I had some sentimental value to that equipment."

"And there is a vault." Vex says with a grin that reminded Xena of a dragon when it hears that there is an amount of gold nearby.

Lady Kima pauses before nodding. "And there is a vault."

"Unless it melted." Scanlan looks at the fortress with doubt.

"This will greatly enhance your ability to move forward with us, won't it?" Vax asks Lady Kima.

Lady Kima shakes her head. "I think right now the time is of the essence for your friend more than anything. Besides, I highly doubt that that stronghold has been left alone, just because it's filled with rock."

Vax nods. "Maybe on the way out."

"Lady Xena?" Percy speaks up from beside her.

"Please I am no Lady." Xena snorts looking at the man. "Simply Xena will do."

Percy smiles. "Xena then! Um I was wondering you are no longer of the Order of the Platinum Dragon, how are you still Paladin? I mean I do not know much of them so..."

"Well, shockingly one does not have to be part of a cult to get God's attention." Xena says giving him a smirk and looking to Pike. "When the Order banished me and left me for dead-"

"Ahem." Lady Kima raised an eyebrow.

"Oh pardon my Lady." Xena rolls her eyes. "While the assholes beside Lady Kima abandoned me to exile, Bahamut did not, in fact he has made it very clear that he was not leaving me anytime soon. So like a familiar mentor looking over my shoulder... if she could, I couldn't exactly go against my vows to help those in need."

"So what you just go where the wind takes you?" Keylith asks to look over at Lady Kima then away.

Xena frowns. "No, actually when I was exiled I traveled long ways till I found myself in a little village, they took me in without question and return I helped fix their homes, took care of bandits and beasts that bothered them and the next thing I knew I went where I was asked by the villages and towns of Tal'Dorei."

"So." Scanlan says looking at her with a raised eyebrow. "Because Daddy Dragon was watching over you, you didn't have sex or murder people?"

The group shakes their head at their Bard while Xena raises an eyebrow at him.

"Well for one thing Mr. Shorthalt I do not know what Paladin Order you have been around but the Order of The Platinum Dragon does not forsake their people for loving one another or relieving stress in a different way and two again I was banished from the Order so even if there were rules I wouldn't have to follow them and three if you had a mighty being growling in your mind for even a second you too would probably not want to face the consequences." she says before continuing on her way.

**Roll for Stealth Check!**

**Tiberius – 29**

**Scanlan – 19**

**Keylith – 33**

**Percy – 17**

**Pike – 21**

**Vex/Trinket – 24/1**

**Vax – 33**

**Xena – 24**

Trinket growls loudly.

"Trinket, shush. Oh, I didn't feed him today, he's probably so hungry!" Vex coos at her bear.

Once they fed the bear a bit of food and to everyone else, they continue down the cavern. Xena begins to see to search parties in the distance and ushers the group to keep low and watch as they pass. Some of them have small, that reddish glowing stone torches set out to keep their vision about. She can see a few of the parties returning to the city, eventually, the group begins to crest down deeper and dropping into a small decline as this giant, almost hatchback cavern where most of the duergar civilization is built in comes to an end.

They begin to travel deeper, deeper into the Underdark caverns below. As they're continuing forward, everyone smells a familiar scent that catches their attention immediately, especially Vex through her tracking Grog and trying to keep her attention on possibly any sign of Grog.

"I smell blood, fresh blood." Vex whispers worriedly looking at the others.

Glancing over at the side of the cavern which is 50, 60 feet wide at this point, as it's come to a pinching point leading downward, she can see a splatter of blood across the wall to her immediate left, and what looks like a mangled mass of what once was duergar, currently just torn asunder across this rock wall.

"Oh no." She says looking and the corpses.

"I would say 'hey less duergar!' but." Xena began to say as she looks around herself with her sword and shield at the ready.

"What got them right?" Pike finishes her sentence.

"The only time I've seen duergar split across like this was when we saw the camp of that creepy centipede creature." Vex reminds Vax as Keylith took a closer look.

Vax thinks for a moment before saying. "With the stalagmite coming up?"

"Yeah!" She nods before checking around on the ground for tracks.

"Oh shit not that thing again." Xena growls on high alert looking around the place.

"Wait again?!" Scanlan exclaims.

"Fugly son of bitch was feasting on some unfortunate duergar when I passed by it." She says. "So thankfully it didn't take note of me almost screaming my head off, I didn't even think twice before I booked off in another direction."

"How the living fuck did you survive down here!?" Scanlan has to ask Xena with wide eyes.

"I don't have a fucking clue dude." She replies. "The shit I have seen down here and barely escaped from makes me miss the monster's topside."

"I do not recognize the markings on the body." Keylith cuts in with a sigh.

Vex finds that the tracks are very similar to the other camp, there were strange dragging marks on the ground these elongated ones; no footprints. Occasionally she sees what look like human-sized footprints as well, and then these drag marks. She also notice that there is just beyond the rock threshold, as she steps over towards the wall, she sees three other duergar bodies that are torn asunder; Many partially eaten and violently torn apart, some parts scarred, some sort of acidic burn, teeth marks, and claw marks and portions of the limbs that have been pulled off by sheer force.

"It's going to be that centipede creature thingy." Vex groans and Keylith looks to the other bodies to see if she can see anything herself.

It's weird; there are elements of the drag marks on the ground that resemble a creature that has pseudo-pods or some sort of a tentacle-like mass, but Keylith knew of no natural creature that also has this power, this type of hunting technique, nor would this be this far underground.

"Another stitch monster?" Percy speculates after Keylith tells them this.

"Yes." Vax concurs.

"Stitch monster?" Vex asks Percy.

He nods. "Stitch monster."

"I like it." She smiles.

"I do, too." He agrees

**THUS THE BEGINNING OF THE BEAUTIFUL RELATIONSHIP KNOWN AS PERC'AHLIA!**

"Something tentacle-y though, nothing ever good is tentacle-y." Keylith says with a shiver.

"Unless it's deep-fried calamari." Xena points out.

"Ooh!" Pike perks up looking up at her. "I haven't had those in a long while."

Xena points at her. "You, me Oceanside pub, best calamari, my treat if we survive."

"You're on!" Pike says excitedly.

Scanlan blinks at how quick Pike agreed to hang out with this stranger and how quick Xena could get a date with her!?

Vex looks around, sniffing the air and finally, there is a very familiar scent that a goliath barbarian does have. Using Trinket's help, as Vex wasn't as attuned, Trinket does pick up a little bit of Grog's scent in this pathway. Trinket moans, giving her a nudge, and points deeper down the cavern and she can see what looks to be a smattering of small duergar-sized feet and two grooves.

"Lovely." Vex sighs before heading back to the group with Trinket. "Well, Grog definitely came this way. As did the stitch monster, so we don't have much choice but to follow."

Percy nods. "Let's continue."

Keeping their eyes peeled, they travel for another two and a half hours down this cavern path. It grows tighter at points where one can only really fit three or four individuals through, it's about 20, 25 feet wide, then opens up sporadically into small pockets, where the natural topography of this portion of this Underdark cavern structure seems to weave and bend. The warmth and the sulfurous smell that was intrinsic to the duergar portion of the cavern that Xena was used to, begins to slowly fade and the temperature begins to drop.

Still uncomfortable, but it's growing more humid as opposed to dry heat.

Tiberius groans. "It's so good."

After another hour of travel, keeping their eyes out, the temperature drops significantly and is actually quite cold. The heat in the volcanic portion of the cavern structure apparently has passed them now, and they've hit an area of the rock where it is much more chilled, much more ominous.

The humidity begins to fade as well; the air becomes a dry cold.

They made their way down and the topography, which was once the black, jagged obsidian flooring of the previous portion of the Underdark, begins to give way to a more natural grey sand-type texture.

Xena's feet sink about a quarter-inch or so with each step, and she got about 10, 15 feet before the color of the sand and the texture changes dramatically. It looks almost like a peppering of small whitish-yellow stones and rocks, as well as bits of black and grey. It's a giant, rocky pit out in front of you."

"What." Keylith stares in confusion at their surroundings.

"You know." Xena starts, pulling her foot from the sand as it sinks in. "I miss the solid rock we were stepping on a moment ago can we go back to that please?"

"I would like that as well," Vax says as he does the same with his feet.

Percy looks around as well looking for signs of mining, and there is but they're old, they haven't been used in a while. He can see some veins that are dried up; Looks like maybe the duergar had business down here mining.

"Vex'ahlia, you know the Underdark. Are there any critters crawling around in that pit?" Vax asks his sister.

Vex shakes her head negatively.

Keylith goes and inspects the stones; what she notices is, they're not stones, there are pieces of little shards of actual volcanic glass scattered across this entire field mixed with an endless seemingly sea of small bone chunks.

"Ugh." Vex reacts to Keylith's report staring in horror at the pit.

"Chunks?" Xena asks looking around and taking a look herself.

"Great!" Vex groans as Pike looks around nervously.

The pieces of bone that have been rounded off, ground, broken.

"Bone petals." Tiberius says looking at the chunk Xena had picked up.

"Is this some burial ground?" Scanlan wonders.

From what Keylith could tell most of the bones that have been here, have been around long enough to the point where they've eroded, been broken, destroyed over and over again to the point where she can't discern any of the original creatures they may have come from. It's just a sea of bone, obsidian glass, and small bits of stone that have fallen from the actual nearby cavern.

Vax looks past the barrier of Tiberius's light spell, he notices there are occasionally some spires of natural rock, some stalagmites that are jutting out in the distance, and he sees what looks like some semblance of a ruined wall just beyond the edge of the vision; a crumbles, small wall.

Vex on the other hand senses a very strong force of aberration-based, much further, five miles way ahead and have this weird, 'Okay, good to know.' She doesn't sense anything else but she does sense a general presence about this entire sea of bone.

"I've been here." Pike's voice pierces the silence.

"What?!" Keylith looks over wide eyes.

"I was here in the vision." Pike explains looking to everyone.

"Really?" Vex looks down at her friend.

"Yes" Pike nods. "It was a field of broken glass and bone, and I feel like this is it."

"What what do we do?" Vex asks.

Xena finds it funny how when Lady Kima talks about her vision everyone had a look of doubt that crossed their eyes but when their Cleric says she had a vision they were all for it. She may not be the wisest person out there but she knew when someone was being outcast from the group and Xena felt that Lady Kima and her were just that, and it pissed her off.

"And then after that, I got to a cavern of blue crystal." Pike continues.

"Hmm interesting." Tiberius hums scratching his chin.

"So we have to go beyond it." Vex concludes.

"So we're on the right road." Keylith says with a smile.

"I think we have to go beyond this." Pike says to the others.

"Let's keep moving then." Tiberius advises.

"Hey as much as I like to move forward." Xena speaks up, staring at the pit. "I do not like the feeling of this place like at all. Is there any way we can get through without sinking our foot into possible sinking sand?"

Vex looks at the woman before she moves to either edge, she can see the wall comes the straight meeting with this; Aside from climbing the walls properly, they have no other way of traversing this. The cavern itself is about 120 to 150 feet wide; Xena cannot see the ceiling right now and it is creeping her out.

Vex grabs a rock and chucks it through the air, it arcs around, bounces a bit, and comes to rest. Nothing seemed to react with the movement and appears to be safe... ish.

"Well let's go then." Scanlan tells the group.

"No!" Keylith protests. "No, I'm not touching that. Nope."

Scanlan lifts his arms in frustration. "So what are we going to do? Turn around? Grog's that way!"

"No, look okay here is my idea." She gathers the group together in a circle. "We've got that immovable rod.

"Yes, I know where you're going with this, and we'd all have to make a certain-"

"I don't want to touch this, I feel like we should go over it." Keylith says.

"What if these bones come to life?" Pike asks.

"Yeah no I vote as well for no touching that pit." Xena agrees.

Vex looks up. "Can you send your light source up? Can you anybody send light up and see how high the ceiling goes?"

Tiberius mumbles as he makes his way to her. "Shoot an arrow, if you would Vex?"

Vex nods, notching an arrow to her bow, aim to the ceiling, and shoots.

"Light!" Tiberius casts light on the arrow.

As it shoots over, arcs through the air, everyone got a look at the cavern. Xena can see it's a large, arched, natural cavern with a number of hanging stalactites at the top. The arrow goes up, arcs past, and then lands about half a mile down the way, and as it lands, with what little Xena can see through the arc, the path just continues for that full half-mile. Looks like there was either a small series of structures or buildings that were built once within this cavern that has all completely crumbled to ruin with but a few small bastions of foundation that still remain.

"There's no way to avoid it." Vex says.

"There's no way to avoid it." Keylith repeats with a sigh.

"Tiberius." Vex looks to her Dragonborn friend. "How many times can you cast Pillars?"

"Grand Columns is the spell, Vex." He corrects her.

"How many times can you cast Grand Columns?" She sighs as she rephrases her question.

"Multiple times, I guess." He mumbles calculating in his head.

"Could we potentially walk on columns across this thing? Potentially?" Vex wonders.

Keylith thinks for a moment and looks over at Vex. "I mean, I could bend us a stone wall that's and we could just walk along the path, but it only goes so far."

Everyone tried to get the lay of the land and come up with ideas to get across without pretty much walking it for a while till Tiberius snapped his talons and goes to Keylith.

"Lady Keylith, if you will, could you perhaps make a flat, sturdy stone tablet we could all particularly stand on?" he inquires.

Keylith shrugs. "Sure!"

"Make sure it's under a hundred pounds if you could or actually two hundred pounds, a little bit more to work with." He says.

Keylith bends down and makes a big circle where she stands, using her arms and hands she takes a portion of the wall next to her, send it outward and begin to shape it into the large cylinder disc-like platform, that lands on the ground with a thud right at the base of the platform.

"Alright everybody, hop on." Tiberius tells everyone.

While everybody hops on quickly Xena raised an eyebrow. "Uh can it take our weight?"

Tiberius paused for a moment looking from her to Trinket before clearing his voice. "So here's the situation. I can get us all across but I cannot take trinket as well."

"I'm not leaving Trinket behind again." Vex says immediately afterward. "So everybody gets on and we'll see what happens."

Again? Xena thinks to herself trying to keep her face nonchalant.

"Why don't we go across, he can come back and get Trinket." Scanlan proposes.

"Okay yeah." Vex agrees. "How about you guys go and I'll stay with Trinket, you guys go."

"Oh, I am not going to leave her." Vax says crossing his arms.

Xena bites her lip in thought before looking over to the magic users. "Can any of you guys make him weightless or perhaps turn him into something smaller?"

"Wait Vex what was the presence you felt?" Pike asks.

"Um, undead, but not the one I am used to so I wouldn't oh!" She picks up on Pike's thoughts.

Pike gets out her mace of disruption ready looking at Lady Kima and Xena with a grin. "I think us ladies can handle this!"

Xena and Lady Kima look to one another than to the pit, not really going with the idea of having just the three of them be the line of defense while everyone else made a break for it or something.

"Oh! Yes, we can polymorph him." Keylith says to Tiberius.

"Oh very good." He tells her and Xena.

Pike instinctively glance down at her holy symbol of Sarenrae, there is a hairline fracture in it. What was once the perfect and impeccable sphere of design- she has had it her entire life, she looks down and sees, she doesn't know recently, but a portion of the metal symbol is cracked.

"Oh Pike." Scanlan sighs.

"Oh no, this is terrible." Pike looks distraught looking down at her holy symbol.

"Pike, pray! Do something!" Vex insists.

"This is something I need to deal with this is not something we can mend on a whim." Pike told her.

Xena comes over and gently takes the sphere in her hand, she first felt a 'who the hell are you' vibe coming from it before it calmed down as it sensed Xena's own god and allowed her to look at it. She read about this Goddess very well, almost left Bahamut for her once but decided against it.

She looks down at Pike. "What did you do?"

"Maybe because you've been killing unarmed people?" Scanlan guesses.

Pike looks away guiltily. I think it happened because I slit a guy's throat."

Xena's eyes widen before she gently lets go of the sphere and takes a step back. "Well seeing how it is Sarenrae that will do it, but I think with a few good deeds and a few days of talking with her she will let you know what you must do."

Giving her a look of reassurance patting her on the shoulder. "Bahamut knows how many times I made him mad and had to make up for my mistakes."

Pike smiles up at her in thanks.

"So want to make Trinket a kitten?" Keylith asks Vex.

Vex squealed in happiness. "A kitten!?"

Trinket glances over at Keylith with a look in the eye of like not that super excited about becoming another small thing. However, Keylith just looks super excited for it and so with a flick of her fingers Trinket's form shifts down into this tiny white puffball with a pushed-up nose.

Vex picks up the Kitten Trinket and coos over it though she can sense that Trinket is not necessarily pleased but will deal with it. She simple pets him and places him into her shirt.

"Let's go! Come on! let's get on this thing! Grog's getting ahead of us!" Vex ushers everyone onto the disk.

"All right! let's go... on our stone airplane." Scanlan says.

"Let's get on our Wonkavator everybody!" Keylith laughs.

So with a bit more hesitance, Xena steps onto this giant stone; it's really cramped, they're all shoulder to shoulder pushed onto here, Kima and Clarota step onto it as well not looking so pleased with the position they are in.

Tiberius cast Telekinesis of the stone slab lifts them up and pushes them off. Straining it rises and it's one of those moments where they have to gather themselves for balance, but nevertheless, it is not floating.

So, as Tiberius begins to concentrate, the stone begins to glide over this expanse of broken bone and obsidian glass hovering about six feet above the air. He had to move it around occasionally to avoid some of the large stalagmites that are jutting out of the bones.

Percy and Xena kept an eye behind them as the other kept a lookout for Grog or anything else. The ruin the further they went Xena starts seeing bits of bone that are larger than what's near the edge; the bits and pieces that still rounded and weathered but they're less ground down as supposed to what they saw before.

They get about 300 feet out before they heard a loud, echoing scream across the cavern; It sounded male and it is loud.

The group went on high alert.

"Was that Grog!?" Keylith shouts looking terrified for their friend.

"Go!" Vex persists. "Can we go faster?!"

With full concentration, Tiberius pushes them forwards towards the scream.

"Keylith! Take the gnomes!" Vax directs.

Pike and Scanlan ump on Keylith as she transforms into a large eagle with the Gnomes on her back and takes off.

"Why didn't we make her into an eagle before?!" Xena asks holding onto Percy's shoulder to steady them as the disc suddenly gained speed with the weight lightened.

"Cause we're dumbasses that's why!" Vax replies back.

Eventually, the light from Tiberius cascades past one of these joining parts of a wall, and then beyond that they could see what looks like a few other stone pillars that are sticking up. Xena sees what looks like a few other stone pillars that are sticking up and sees what looks like a small party of Duergar that is in the middle of a battle!

"Duergar 12 o'clock!" Xena reports.

There is one duergar who is splatted across the bone floor, there is a troll that is currently in a fist fight with something that's moving extremely fast; this blur of motion can barely make out the physical form before the troll turns and runs in your direction, surprised to see the light coming towards them, and in its expression of extreme confusion and fear Xena sees something fly past and the trolls head just rolls off the top of his neck.

"That's not Grog! We're going toward a monster!" Vex exclaims.

The troll body hits the ground, as it does bits of bone begin to rise up from the ground and pull the troll underneath.

"Okay, Xena your sense proved right." Lady Kima says staring wide-eyed down at the bones.

Vax immediately takes out his daggers and everyone follows suit with Xena give the word of Fire to her sword. As the group begins to push forward there are two duergar are now backing up instinctively. One looks down at his feet now that have been grabbed, and he's being pulled under, and he starts trying to wrestle himself free. This blur of motion jumps off one of the platforms, spins in the air, and lands with a slam that completely splatters the rock that he's right next to. This poor duergar's jaw goes flying off to the side and silence hits him in the middle of his scream.

The last duergar there who's looking around see the stone platform and goes. "Let me on! Let me on!"

"Fuck off! This is our platform!" Xena yells back.

He goes running over and is trying to jump up towards the stone platform they were on ignoring Xena. He gets onto the side which was a bad decision on his part cause Xena was there to immediately kick him and Vex to punch him in the face. Apparently though whatever was down there was worse than being abused cause he holds tight.

Vax comes over, grabs him by the cloak. "What is it? What is it?!"

"I don't know! Get it away! Get it away!" He screams.

Way above them Eagle form Keylith does a nice high soaring lap so she can use her keen sight to see the creature; it was a humanoid form, looking at the body and the torso, it looks elven. Its very thin and gaunt legs dangling as four giant, jagged-looking tentacles sprout from both sides of its torso, holding it aloft, two lifting it off the ground and keeping it''s body suspended, while two are whipping around in the process. Its head cracks as it glances up towards the wall these blank, white eyes shooting around in different directions spontaneously, with this maddening look. Whatever this is, is clearly insane and is currently driven on some sort of hunger blood-lust. The stitch marks you see across its body are very reminiscent of the earlier abominations that others saw, created by K'Varn, and sent throughout this cavern structure.

Back down with the others Vax and Vex chuck the duergar through the air, the creature who briefly had stopped and get a full view of its horrible form. It was staring up at Keylith the eagle soaring overhead suddenly its head snaps back into focus as the duergar goes swinging through the air.

As it does it licks its lips, where its mouth is, the lips curl back and the jaw splits open slightly with this horrible Predator-like fanged jaw, and the two tentacles that are currently up in the air reach out, grab and just split in it two.

Its torso then divides and sprays it with crimson as it licks it out of the air.

"Well shit." Xena swears.


	5. Chapter 1 - Glass and Bone Part 3

_**Just to let you know** _

_**I am in fact rolling for the monsters to see if they hit Xena or not before I let Matt take over.** _

_**Everyone roll initiative!** _

_**Vex – 21** _

_**Tiberius—18** _

_**Vax—17** _

_**Xena – 15** _

_**Scanlan – 12** _

_**Keylith – 8** _

_**Percy – 8** _

_**Pike – 4** _

The monstrosity lumbers to the side of the disc and with its tentacles, attacks three times on Vax, Kima, and Tiberius.

Vax quickly dodges out of the way, the second attack goes to Kima in which strikes her armor but she manages to pull out of the way and it gleans off the side and a little bit of acid scar across the edge of her leather armor. The third one instead of hitting Tiberius actually whips out and strikes the bottom of the stone the group is standing on which rocks for a second and at first Xena was worried but it seems to not affect thank goodness.

Vex casts Hunter’s Mark on it and as she pulls back her arrow, she pulls it up, the thorns grow rather rapidly out of the wood itself and as she pulls back, the bowstring itself ignites setting the bow, the shaft of the arrow on fire as well as she releases the arrow as the creature shifts into place, it lashes out with all its tentacles and as it pulls back, looks like it’s ready to pounce, right towards its torso, it hits and it looks down instinctively and it burst into a spray of thorns all over its face and its torso and it reels back screeching from the pain, the flames licking up over the front of its body.

There’s a semblance of clothing on it, whatever this thing once was, it’s still wearing the clothing it had and a portion of it has burned off part of the torso. Whoever this poor soul once was, there is no shred of humanity left in it.

Tiberius shouts. “Hop off!”

Without even questioning him, Xena jumps off to land on one of the spires beside the disc.

**Roll for Acrobatics**

**15 + 3 = 18**

**Roll for Strength**

**14 + 5= 19**

She thankfully makes it and grips the pillar tight with one hand.

“Hop off? No way! I’m not stepping on this bone shit!” Vex protests.

Xena watches in annoyance as Tiberius tells everyone to hold on tight as they float away. Vax does a double-take at Xena who was now on a spire watching them move away from her. “Uh Tiberius--”

Tiberius moves the disc above, well the butt-hole and slams it down of the bastard. Xena witnessing the chaos that was about to happen is now really grateful for jumping off before this.

The platform comes cascading down at a fair speed immediately breaking over this creature, as it is a pretty thin wall to have only been about 100 pounds; it completely shatters over the top of it. Some of them manage to leap off and tumble the best they can to catch themselves... except for Tiberius.

Xena winces as he falls prone on the ground.

As it shrugs off the bits and chunks of stone around its body Xena sees that a little bit of blood is being pulled to the seams of its body; It’s taken some hits.

Vax clicks the boots of haste together to activate them before charging towards it, only for its head to click over its back and looks straight at him, almost neck bending in the process. So instead of a sneak attack, Vax still charges the creature with his daggers; the first strike hits, the second one the poison energy pulses through the blade, but it seems that the creature is immune to poison. The third strike, Vax swings towards and it actually slaps the blade out of his hand and sticks to the ceiling but apparently, Vax had something special cause the dagger returns to his belt!

Xena looks around herself and to the others before making eye contact with the creature’s blank eyes with a snarl waving her own Hunter’s mark on him before rushing it thinking ‘Fuck it!’ as she gets beside the creature and attacks it with her Flame Tongue greatsword striking it once across the chest and again towards on of its tentacles. The creature shrieks and the flaming blade sears its flesh and barely keeps the tentacle from being sliced off as it backs away from this half-orc that seemed to be shielded by flame.

“Come on!” she goads it.

Lady Kima seeing her old pupil charging towards it grabs her sword and reaches over as divine energy is instilled within her blade. She goes to make make also two attacks against the creature. She rushes towards it beside Xena and strikes it both times with the sword. When the first strike hits the second she swings around and instills her Divine Smite, as it slashes across, you can see the torso splits open.

As the torso opens up Xena can see a part of its guts spilling out, and they begin to slowly pull themselves back in.

“Oh fuck off.” Xena snarls.

Scanlan upon Keylith the eagle tries to find a clean sight of her... he.. the creature whatever. Scanlan cannot seem to get a clear view so he holds back his cast of blindness until Keylith got into range of it.

Clarota’s form begins to shift and vibrate on and out of the place where it’s hard to see exactly where Clarota is standing. He takes two steps back and misses the attack from the creature entirely.

Keylith sees everyone entering battle swoops down and drops the gnomes off near the creature before perching on the stalagmite closest to her and transforms back to her humanoid form.

Scanlan screeches in horror as he falls from the skies but lands catching himself on the bones, safe. Pike on the other hand sinks into her waist at the impact.

“Gah stupid armor!” Pike hisses.

Keylith now back into her humanoid self casts a Wall of Stone in a doughnut shape raising others, including Pike, and excluding the douche-bag ten feet high. Xena though annoyed at the creature for its self-healing is also relieved to feel the solid ground and no bony hands to have their way with her.

Percy, having his gun at the ready, the first shot he shoots but the creature just dodges and totally unnatural sense sees where the aim is and is already out of the way before the bullet gets there returns. However, Percy gets him with the second shot from the Pepper-box, and blast in the side of its chest.

Percy frowns seeing that he hadn’t done as much damage as he would like but hears Pike yell across the stone doughnut.

“It is alright Percy we are getting there!” She encourages him.

Xena who stood next to him snorts as he shakes his head. “Alright, thanks, mom.”

With that Percy turns and heads for the stalagmite behind him to get a better eye view of the creature.

Scanlan seeing the creature distract from being shot at sends his spell of blindness and sends it towards him, hoping it will work! As he releases the arcane essence, a darkness spill up and completely cascades over the white, almost soulless, freaking out eyes of this creature. It’s very Silent Hill in the way it moves. Suddenly, its eyes fill over with darkness and it began to writhe and move around like it’s unable to truly grasp the full surroundings.

Seeing it has worked Scanlan throws a little inspiration at Pike by looking over to her and give her a little wink and a smile.

So Pike seeing everything happening Pike decides to send a Guiding Bolt at this thing! As she looks down she grabs her holy symbol and even though it is cracked, she still felt the presence of Sarenrae looking down upon her. The divine energy coalesces in her hand and she throws it forward with divine wrath as it streaks across the air. It slams into the side of this weird twisting abomination, and at it blasts into it, its tentacles reel back and pull back in severe pain and it roars this horrible, screeching scream into the cavern around you, echoing down the hall.

It’s looking a little rough.

The monstrosity now blind lashes its tentacles aiming at whoever it can and one goes for Xena but misses entirely before going towards Vex as she to dodges out of the way with no problem. The third tendril reaches out and attempts to grab Lady Kima, the tentacle wraps around her and grapples her in place.

The creature, now holding onto someone grins before it leaps out of the doughnut wall. It brings all of its tentacles to the ground and leaps up into the air. Vax can hit it with his dagger as it does but it wasn’t enough to stall it as flies through the air with Lady Kima and lands, and the wounds they have left on it is slowly begun to heal.

“Lady Kima!” Xena cries out.

Vex, not wanting to hit Lady Kima with her spells so instead gets out her blazing bowstring. This arrow: once again she pulls out, bursts into flame. The heat is a bit strong for her face, but she releases it forward; it actually impacts, streaks across with an arc of fire, and slamming into its side.

Tiberius finally getting up off the floor, looks around and he doesn’t like what he sees. Seeing Lady Kima in trouble and he really wants to get on Lady Allura’s good side he uses his telekinesis on the tentacle to unwrap it off Lady Kima, and attempt to pull it off of her.

The tentacle begins to shake and is pulled off of her body; Lady Kima wrenches herself free.

Tiberius gets this mischievous grin on his face as he uses his power to smack the creature repeatedly saying. “Stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself!”

The tentacle starts slapping around its body and it looks confusing. It’s not enough to do damage to it but it looks unsure as to why it’s having a hard time controlling its own limb.

Vax flies off the wall and books it towards the creatures taking his daggers out and stab the bejesus out of it! So as Vax rushes past he slams the blade into the side. Where the part of it starts and open but’s starting to close up again, Vax reopens that seam and drags across, leaving a giant wound across its side.

With one dagger in it, Vax uses the other to grab it and pull it until he got a hold of it. Its physical body is pulled to the ground, and its tentacles are trying to pull it up off the ground, and flipping around; Complete chaos in the air. He brings the blade across and sees the blood begin to pour out from it, and as it does, the throat opens up, and where the cut on the throat there Is what looks like white gleaming teeth on the inside of its throat.

The entire interior of its trachea is coated in teeth.

Xena feeling a little annoyed that not only that Lady Kima keeps getting into more trouble than she ever was and that the creature keeps getting away from her. She leaps off the wall and charges once more only this time she summons Wrathful Smite to her flaming blade as she lays into the tentacles of the beast with a war cry and not hitting Vax in the process.

Lady Kima, free from the tentacle and seeing Vax holding it down and Xena hacking away at it, takes the sword, swings it, and is going to come on down with Divine Smite, the first arcing down with divine energy, streaking across the bare-lit cavernous area. It hits the ground, and it splatters blood. One of its tentacles is barely hanging on by just a section of muscle and sinew. However, she looks down real fast and sees now these skeletal hands are reaching up and grabbing her legs and starting to pull her down. She’s unable to break from it and is now being pulled down into the ground beneath her.

“Goddammit, Lady Kima!” Xena yells at her. “Why can’t get captured like a bloody princess for just one minute!”

“Shut up and help me!” She screams back pulling at her legs.

Clarota begins to coalesce bluish crackling energy in his hand, the tentacles of his face begin to swirl and pull back into this horrible grimace, and as it releases this bolt of lightning energy that arcs past, just overhead of where Kima is since she’s been pulled down below. Lightning hits the creature but seems to more like tickle the creature.

“Really Clarota? Really?!” Xena exclaims looking at the mind flayer.

Clarota looks away dejectedly. “It was the best I could do.”

Keylith seeing Lady Kima slowly getting taken under, makes eye contact with her before summoning Grasping Vines from the stalactite over closest near Lady Kima, the vine pulls out of the side of the rock, it reaches out and wraps itself around her body, and begins to pull she reaches over and grabs the vine for extra strength and it pulls her out of the floor. She goes flying over and lands at the side of the stone with a vine that’s still loosely wrapped around her, but it’s definitely pulled her free of the floor.

Lady Kima is currently held aloft by this that strapped around her. She’s looking confused, thankful but also wants to be let go.

“Calm down Kima! Jeez!” Keylith shouts.

Percy uses this moment to climb and find himself a seat on top of the stalactite.

Scanlan shouts out to the creature. “You know what? Your tentacles make you look kind of fat and the elf thing is played out. It’s sort of the 1990s. Orlando Bloom and the whole bone thing is just really tacky!”

Tiberius looks at Scanlan cover his shoulder with a curious look and Xena gave the gnome a confused look.

“Orlando Bloom? 1990? what?” She wonders.

The creature, essentially, being blind, all it can rely on right now is audio sensation around it. It picks up ringing through the air, what hint and a shred of humanity are within its psyche understands the Common Scanlan speaks in its direction.

For a moment, it seems to sag all its tentacles.

“What the fuck?” Xena says staring at the creature as it tries to curl into a ball.

“Vicious Mockery.” Vax grunts, still holding the beast down. “It is a spell Bards use to cripple their foes, shit you not up and Emberhold he actually got a Duergar to drown himself with it.”

“The fuck? Where was this when I was living off bread?” She muttered. “Could have had proper food by the end of the week with that.”

Vax reminded himself to get this woman a drink and learn more about her if they survive. He looks over to see Scanlan nodding to Xena and starts wiggling his eyebrows and suddenly he felt inspired but shook his head and snorts at his little friend.

Using her sprinters' boots Pike runs over to where everyone else is standing and just manages to barely squeeze through people without falling off of the top of the wall. As she pulls through the rest of the crowd, Pike stands next to someone, grabs her holy symbol again. This time, looking up to her hand, this divine energy materializes and shines down in a god ray onto her arm as she gathers it with her fingers, it seems to formulate this actual thick rock feeling sensation. Pike swing it underhand softball pitch with absolute furious anger that slams into the side of the creature.

(Matt really likes making people hit it in their sides no?)

Bursting with divine energy, doing a very sincerely impressive amount of damage for a small Guiding Bolt. It’s currently still trying to get back up after Vax has been holding it to the ground, Vax can see it blast its side, he is almost pulled over on top of it by the sheer force of the impact and Xena had to thank Bahamut for warning her to get out of the way of the bolt or it would have been her taking that damage to her side.

“Sorry Vax!” Pike yells.

After all the impact, all the sounds it’s hearing and getting out of someone’s grasp, it moves over to where it all was coming from. The others can see now, the tendrils open up, even though its eyes can’t see. There are a bunch of gills across its body; slits in its torso and it almost looks like all of them open up into these tiny little mouths. Teeth rippling through them and expel this cloud of green gas that spread around to everyone within ten feet of it.

Vax and Xena were out of reach and had to watch as this cloud of greenish gas bursts out from all of these strange slits in its body, the others close to it could feel this acidic fume fill their lungs and touch their skin. Vex managed to duck out of the way and resist a lot of the damage, as does Pike, pulling up her cloak in front of the way. However, Clarota, Kima, and trinket take the worse of the damage by accidentally breathing in the gas.

Trinket's kitten form is taken away as the polymorph wears off. The bear burst out from Vex’s chest ripping Vex’s shirt in the process.

“Oh, no, your shirt is ripped.” Scanlan fake horror as he got a good look.

“Oh no! All of the sudden my bosom comes flying out!” Vex exclaims playfully.

Percy did his best not to gawk at Vex’s chest and get back to his plan.

“Don’t you mean your BEAR chest?” Xena says with a smirk though this wasn’t the time for that sort of thing she couldn’t help herself.

Vax snorts. “Oh, heavens Grog is going to love you.”

Xena looks at him with a smirk before getting ready to charge the beast.

Trinket after bursting out of Vex’s torso lands into the bones below growling. At that moment the darkness that has been blinding the creature begins to fade from its eyes and the whiteness bursts from its face. It’s intent now, as each eye individually darts around and takes the reference of all the points of possible attacks that are now before it.

Vex calls for Trinket to climb up the wall as she readies to attack with her Hail of Thorns. Trinket scrambles up the side of the wall. As it does, one of the white eyes is looking around like an iguana focuses on Trinket, goes to whip toward Trinket, and smacks the bear unconscious making the bear fall from the wall and back onto the bones.

“No! Trinket!” Vex cries out watching as her sweet little bear lay where the skeleton hands were ready to take him.

Since Trinket is too close to the monster Vex takes the spell of thorns away and uses her Bloodseeking Bow on the bastard, so both arrows sink Vex can feel her jaw tense and a tear run down her face but she is intent on taking this son of a bitch down!

Tiberius once again assesses the situation and naturally, he doesn’t like it so he cast Watery Sphere to capture the creature; it misses it entirely and just floats there beside the monster.

Vax speeds over for a sneak attack and reaches back angrily takes the dagger and drags it down, and finds one of those seams of its arm, dragging it across the front as the arm actually falls off onto the ground and it squirms on its own.

Dodging the skeleton assholes and not thinking twice, Xena runs to Trinket as Vax attacks the creature and kneels using Lay on Hands, giving all the health she can give to bring Trinket back.

“Thank you! Oh, Thank you, Xena!” She hears Vex cry to her as she mutters the incantation.

“Just nail that son of a bitch!” She shouts to her as Trinket slowly comes back from unconsciousness and licks her hand that was on his snout when she was healing him.

“Hey buddy, you took a bit of a tumble there didn’t you?” She pets the bear’s snout. “You’re alright now.”

Lady Kima charges forward doing exactly what Xena says.

“Don’t be stupid Lady Kima!” Keylith shouts.

Scanlan looks over at her and wonders just what the hell does she have against Lady Kima since everyone else liked her, hell Xena was already liked if not loved now that she saved Trinket. Sure he didn’t like her either but he wasn’t openly hostile and making things awkward with everyone; it also didn’t help that Xena looks like she is just waiting for Keylith to say another word before she takes her greatsword to her.

Kima goes to strike twice, but with each blade strike, the head glimpses over, sees the attack and the body bends out of the way of the first strike. In the second attack, a tentacle actually slaps the blade out of her hand.

With a curse, Lady Kima goes and picks it off the ground while Keylith rolls her eyes at how useless she sees Lady Kima is being but freezes when she catches yellow eyes glaring at her from across the way as if Xena heard her thoughts and it scared her a bit.

Clarota, since he cannot use his Mind Blast without hitting the others, takes his own tentacles and grapples the creature once more to finish this once and for all.

Keylith looks away from the glare and focuses on the battle and seeing that Clarota just grappled him thinks ‘Alright cool, that’s good!’

She summons the grasping vines again from the other stalactite and grabs Trinket around his waist to get him onto the wall with Vex and the others. As it wraps around the body, the bones have already begun to reach up and start pulling not only Trinket’s body but also got Xena in their grasp as well.

“Grab onto Trinket Xena!” Vex tells her.

Xena shakes her head. “That will put too much weight for the princess to lift us out just get Trinket up there!”

She was correct for Keylith and the bones were having a tug of war; The vines wrap around Trinket and begin to pull, the bones hold tight Trinket is still recovering from being unconscious while Xena tries to pull away. It’s a standoff between the vine holding the tired Trinket’s body who is still moving and shifting, the bones are beginning to rise almost like this slow tide to begin to wrap around not the only Trinket but Xena as well and with no assistance from the vines, she was already deep in the earth at her stomach.

“Dammit!” She snarls looking around for either something to hold other than Trinket’s body or think of a way to scare off the bones.

“Xena just grab onto Trinket!” Pike yells at her.

“I can’t!” She yells back. “Trinket needs to get up there first!”

Percy pulls out Bad News and has a clear shot down towards the entity.

“Kill him, Percy!” Vex shouts out worried sick over Trinket and Xena.

As the entity turns around, its head cocked to the side, its tendrils flailing around it, one lifting it, it begins to reach up to bring a lash upon Xena who is now just up to her collarbone and is just struggling like an animal in a trap, its eyes streak around and catches Percy’s, big mistake.

He releases, pulls back on the trigger, the impact blows Percy off the top of the stalagmite. He falls in the air, but in that split second, he keeps his vision on as he is floating back and this moment as time slows, not wanting to lose it, the bullet goes into the eyes straight to his head. One of the eyes now goes dark from the crimson impact; the jaw opens slack, with all the teeth exposing as the back of the head explodes all across Vax who was standing behind it.

The giant hole now, which is one can see portions of its lower jaw are still visible, but the entire top of its head is gone. There are parts of its flesh trying to reach up and reform, and then starting falling limp as its form begins to quiver and eventually fall apart.

The seams all begin to unravel and its entire body begins to fall apart into chunks. Eventually what’s left is this elven torso that slinks to its knees, takes a step, takes another step, and then falls onto its back, destroyed... the bones reach up and take its body.

Pike jumps off the wall wielding her mace of Disruption and with a giant arc, she slams it into the bones between Trinket and Xena. As she does the stone and bone around it cave in and shatter into dust at the sheer force of the Mace of Disruption, leaving this big old cavernous space where there once was ground. As she brings it up again she begins swinging it around outside of Trinket and Xena, releasing all of the bones in the vicinity.

The bones at Pike’s feet that were beginning to grab onto her as she landed begins to give away and slowly back away from the gnome.

“Yeah that’s right you better run away!” Pike yells at the bones before going over and helping Xena out as Keylith gets Trinket to the wall and Vex helps the two girls get up.

The moment the bear is on the wall Vex hugs him fiercely as Pike checks him over to see if the bones did any damage while Xena lays flat on her back panting in exhaustion over the fear and being pulled to Bahamut knows where and struggling all that time.

Keylith takes her Grasping Vine and reaches out to grab the elven man’s body quickly.

Vex looks over to Xena with tears in her eyes as Trinket licks the side of her face. “Xena, thank you for saving him, you to Pike.”

Xena waves an arm in the air, grunting before having it collapse over her body.

Vax and Kima walk over to Pike to keep safe from the bones to be pulled as Vax clean off the chunks as Scanlan and Keylith check over the body and somehow found Braces of Archery inside the body.

Everyone is now standing aloft, on the wall and see past about 120, 150 feet ahead of them, the sea of bone chips and glass seems to eventually fade into more stone.

Xena with a sigh gets up from her rest and goes over to the now mutilated body of the elven and kneels beside him takes out her holy symbol and speaks. “Bahamut, Platinum Dragon, your servant sends this fallen mortal to you with all humility, that their deeds in life may be judged in death and given peace."

With a soft purr from the lizard, she puts the holy symbol away and turns back to the group. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Hey, will you lead the way Pike? With your crazy mace path?” Scanlan asks with a grin.

Pike taking her mace of disruption with her shield up and slamming it before her. As it does there are just plumes of dust that are being cast in the air behind them. Xena and the others cough a little bit as it’s lifting the small spray of dist.

They make their way across the open field of bone and glass to the other side, finding for the first time in a little bit of time solid ground.

“Oh thank Bahamut.” Xena sighs in relief as everyone took a moment to gather their breath.

Looking over Xena can see in the darkness ahead of her what looks to be a faint source of light around another large pillar or cluster of stone in the distance.

“Hey.” She gets the others' attention and points to the light source.

The light itself is a reddish-orange and appears to be flickering... a fire?

Vex looks around for tracks and sees more duergar feet patterns and the same singular tracks from before.

“Let’s go kick some ass!” Scanlan says to them with a fist in the air.

“I’ll go take a look,” Vax says to the others.

“I’ll go with you.” Xena walks up beside him.

Vax turns to her with a raised eyebrow as he looks up and down at her full armor to Pike’s own armored profile and back.

Xena returns the eyebrow. “I am quieter than I look.”

With a moment to think Vax nods.

**Roll for Stealth**

**Vax – 25**

**Xena – NAT 20! +7= 27**

The moment Vax nods Xena suddenly seemed to have vanished, making him blink and look around himself confused.

Vex crossed her arms and grins in amusement at her twin. “Now you know how we feel when you do that.”

Vax smiles at his sister and shrugs before heading for the light source. Vax makes his way through the darkness as everyone takes a short rest, around the side of the stone platform and as he crests his vision, he sees the flickering is indeed a small campfire; not used for light, but apparently used for cooking at the scent also hits him.

There is some sort of meat currently cooked on this flame, it smells pretty good but he was not quite sure what the source of the meat is and he worries for a second because the two duergar that are sitting there, currently hold the meat in the center of this, are next to a giant troll who has his hand on the side of a rickety wooden on this cart, there are two sets of wheels on each side and there is a large lumbering goliath individual currently held down with bands of iron.

For a moment he thinks. ‘Oh god, are they eating him?!’

However from what he can tell his friend appears to be intact, though with a quick gland as he peers around the other side only to jump a mile high as Xena stands on the other side of the column.

Ignoring Vax’s cursing, Xena can see the Goliath's body is riddled with scratches and small wounds and incisions and streaks of dried blood.

“He isn’t looking so good Vax.” She reports looking to him who is frowning before looking back and freezes.

Vax goes back to his side of the pillar and sees across the way there are three tents set up around this area. One of the tents has opened and he sees a duergar female had stepped out: silver circlet across her forehead, long robes. Queen Ulara walks up and starts talking to the other duergar, pointing at the goliath, motions to the other two, and steps back into the tent, closing it behind her as the two duergar grins.

One reaches into his pouch and begins to pull out a small metal hooked utensils, possibly to go in for another round of whatever they had been doing to the poor man.

Vax puts a hand to the earring and whispers. “Come, now!”

Back with the group Tiberius stands up. “Ooh! Vax just said we should go!”


	6. Musical Special Episode Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every episode I finish on Vox Machina I will make a musical episode for fun!

**Critical Role**

**Vox Machina Special Episode Musical**

**Better Than I – David Campbell**

“Xena Sharptooth you are hereby stripped of your Paladin rights in the Order of Bahamut The Platinum Dragon and banished.” The Head of the Order, Victor's voice echoes through her mind as she is pushed off the carriage.

She lay in the caverns of the Underdark exhausted and starving as she has been wandering around for days after getting herself out of the river, hiding in the shadows as she hides her tears. “I thought I did what’s right, I thought I had the answers.”

Xena Sharptooth had been training that day, readying herself to take her right of passage to become a captain in the Order. Lady Kima had told her she made it to the top ten with her brother sisters and seems to have a chance if she kept up her paste but...

“I thought I chose the surest road.” she whimpers, sitting up slowly. “But that road brought me here.”

Flashes of Xena being held at court for crimes she didn’t commit, looking to her mentors, brothers, and sisters for aid but only found either sneers or guilty looks as they look away. She kneels in front of the elders of Order, shirtless and bleeding as she is whipped for her treason, sitting in the dark cell with only mice to talk to.

“So I put up a fight and told you how to help me.” She looks down at her holy symbol, clutched in her hands. “Now just when I have given up... the truth is coming clear.”

She stands up, legs shaking as she leans against the wall making her way in the dark, and blesses she had dark vision. “You know better than I, you know the way. I’ve let go the need to know why for you know better than I.”

Her being shoved out of a carriage and left with her armor and sword in the dark woods.

“If this has been a test.” She shakes her head. “I cannot see the reason, but maybe knowing I don’t know is part of getting through.”

She sees her former self making it into the Halfling village, meeting the Elders there as they look at her with mistrust then her taking on many bandits and beasts who have been hurting the people of the land to her leaning against a tree with her eyes closed.

“I try to do what’s best to do what’s best and faith has made it easy.” She trips over a rock but catches herself before she landed in a lava pit. “To see the best thing I can do is put my trust in you.”

A couple of hours in the cavern she turns the corner and hides immediately as duergar rushes by muttering in urgency as they went.

“You know better than I, you know the way.” she closes her eyes and prays that they do not see her. “I’ve let go the need to know why for you know better than I.”

She is back in the forest but this time in a clearing looking up at the sky with a smile on her face as she races an eagle that swooped by her.

“I saw one cloud and thought it was the sky, I saw a bird and that that I could follow but it was you who taught that bird to fly, if I let you reach me will you reach me?” She stares at the symbol and moves forward, full of new determination.

Lady Kima, her old mentor, her best friend is in this place somewhere along with her comrades, she cannot quit now, not now.

“For you know better than I, you know the way. I’ve let go the need to know why I'll take what answers you supply.”

What feels like days, Xena leans against the wall exhausted once more hot from the lava heat.

“You know better than I.”

but she will not give up... not yet.


	7. Chapter 2 – Yug'voril Uncovered Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slowly but surely I can see Critters and DND players come out of the woodwork to read my fanfic and welcome you all! I have been so lonely!
> 
> Travis Willingham as Grog, Goliath Barbarian
> 
> Marisha Ray – Keyleth, Half-Elven Druid
> 
> Taliesin Jaffe – Percy, Human Gunslinger
> 
> Ashley Johnson – Pike, Gnome Cleric
> 
> Sam Riegel – Scanlan, Gnome Bard
> 
> Orion Acaba – Tiberius, Dragonborn Sorcerer
> 
> Liam O'Brien – Vax'ildan – Half-Elven, Rouge
> 
> Laura Bailey – Vex'ahlia – Half-Elven, Ranger
> 
> Gina Carano – Xena Sharptooth – Half- Orc, Paladin
> 
> AND
> 
> Mathew Mercer – The Dungeon Master
> 
> In case anyone wonders what Xena does in the opening theme she is slicing the air with her sword and gripping her shield before going in a stance with the sword in front of her face.

"I think I got a plan." Percy tells the others as they reach Vax and Xena.

"Oh? Because I did too." Scanlan butts in.

"You have a plan?" Percy asks looking down at him.

"No, I want to hear yours, Let's do them both without telling, and just see what happens." Scanlan says with an amused grin.

The group giggle quietly while Xena looks over to Vax with a raised eyebrow and he only replies with a shrug.

"I'll Roshambo you for it." Percy offers getting his hands ready.

"I actually- I actually like this idea, Scanlan." Tiberius says smiling down at the gnome.

Percy goes ahead to tell the plan. "Keyleth can meld through the rock, So, if we can get the attention of everyone who's guarding Grog, she could slip through while we're drawing them out, get through and let him go in the midst of the fight."

Scanlan snaps his finger and points at Percy. "That works with my plan!"

"That works with your plan?" Percy repeats, adjusting his glasses, looking down at him.

"My plan was- was to go in there and distract them while you did something!" Scanlan says.

"Perfect plan!" Vex tells the both of them.

"I like that plan." Percy nods to Scanlan.

Scanlan shrugs, chuckling a bit. "I hadn't completed the thought because something hadn't been worked out."

Percy shakes his head. "You were 80% there."

Where Vax and Xena were, they were still waiting for their comrades after Vac sent them a message... it has been a few minutes.

"Well?" Xena says to Vax, crossing her arms. "Are they coming or what?"

Vax looks around them before shrugging and rubs the earring again saying. "Hey, guys you coming here?"

Just as he asks that Tiberius coasts up along the back portion of Vax's arrival point scaring the shit out of Vax and her.

"Where is everybody?" Vax whispers to Tiberius confused and a little annoyed at being scared.

"I don't know, I heard you-"

Tiberius stops as all three notices one of the duergar looks over his shoulder in their direction and begins to make a few steps in their direction.

Vax grabs Tiberius by the snout and pull him back, around the edge of that rock with Xena waiting for them as he pulls out his daggers. Xena slowly pulled out her sword, keeping the words of flame in her mouth until the right moment to strike or on Vax's signal.

The duergar continues to move forward towards the edge of the rock.

The three stare in surprise as Scanlan approaches out of the shadows.

"The fuck is he doing?!" She hisses at Vax and Tiberius.

"Vex!" Vax speaks into the earring. "What the hell is going on?! Why is Scanlan in the open?"

"Just got with it brother!" She whispers back. "Percy and Scanlan have a plan.

"And the plan is?" Vax asks a little exasperated with his group at the moment still holding Tiberius's snout.

"Scare the shit out of them." she simply replies.

With a sigh, he takes off his hand off the earring and looks over to Xena. "We are to approach and scar the shit out of the dwarves.

Xena's confused look turned into what Vax can only describe as mischievous and terrifying at the same time.

"Oh, I got this on lock-down." She says taking a step out. "Time to take revenge for my comrades."

The Rouge made a note in his head to never piss off the half-orc but then crossed it out cause he had a feeling not only was he going to piss her off in the future but surprised with himself that he thought she was going to stick around after they got themselves and Lady Kima out of here.

The duergar that was heading in the three's direction immediately turns to Scanlan in surprise, normally pupil-less eyes of the ashy-skinned duergar are glowing with an odd dull green color that the others haven't seen in duergar previously, and he starts rushing towards Scanlan.

He swings his war hammer at Scanlan only for the gnome to pull back and the hammer swings past him and he ducks out of the way. Vex comes up shooting an arrow only for it to just cruise over his head and hear it scattering and clattering against the rocks in the distance. The duergar looks over in where the arrow comes from as the second arrow just grazes his shoulder; there is a little bit of blood begins to spill out, but it doesn't even turn his head towards the wound, he's still just glaring at the half-elf ranger angrily.

Vax pulls Tiberius further back, clutching the front of his snout, keeping him quiet, he took his dagger out, toss it in the air, catches it, and flings it at full speed, striking true!

The duergar, still glaring at Vex, pulls back his hammer again looking down at Scanlan, coming down for a blow to basically bash his skull in, but he stops suddenly, as there is this blade protruding from the front of his skull. His glowing eyes fade back to dull, pale whitish color, and his body slumps onto the ground as the dagger magically returns to Vax's hand from below.

Vex smiles proudly at her brother giving him a nod. "Good job."

Scanlan shakes his head at the twins before taking a step forward to the rest of the duergar with Xena standing to the right of him with her flaming sword at the ready and snarling at the group before them

"Queen Ulara. Show yourself! Step out and talk to us, everyone hold." He shouts out bringing a hand out to his friends.

Vex steps up behind Scanlan with Trinket behind him reading an arrow to shoot whoever comes towards the gnome. Keyleth who has transformed into an earth elemental, slinks back into the shadows and sink into the ground like sand through an hourglass, and just vanishes beneath the surface of the rock.

Kima steps forward, making a point to step angrily onto the corpse of the duergar, hearing the crunching of bone and metal as she steps over him as she takes a stance, Xena.

"Temper temper." Xena says softly with a grin.

"Shut up." was Kima's reply.

"Bad-ass." Vax mumbles with a smirk.

Percy stays a little bit back readying Pepperbox as well, as Clarota moves to the side as well and Pike goes to the center where she feels the most applicable to heal.

Tiberius pulls himself away from Vax's grasp and rubs his ring before going invisible as Vax stays hidden behind the rock ready to throw another dagger.

**Intimidation Check:**

**Scanlan: 22**

After Scanlan finished his shout, the duergar grabs his war-pick from his side angrily and begins to step forward, as a, the snarling half-orc with a flaming sword appears, a giant grizzly bear and the rest of the party filters up behind him in full flying V formation. He puts his pick to his side and yells off his shoulder.

"My Queen. We've got company!"

Xena smirks., making the duergar glare at her, as he does, the flap of the far end of the tent, opens up. There's a dwarf there, not a duergar, but a dwarf that is standing there, that steps out of the way, and Queen Ulara steps out, as well.

She angrily looks off to the side and sighs. "Well, then. It appears we have some business to discuss."

Xena's eyes widen at the dwarf and elf... they, they were part of the group! It was Bamur and Aerin; both mercenaries and... why were they with the Queen?!

"Lady Kima." she whispers not looking away from them.

"I know." She says. "But we cannot do anything."

Queen Ulara begins to step past the front of the fire way, stopping right next to the fire pit, with her arms crossed with... Bamur and Aerin taking flank.

"Ah... you." the Queen says looking at Xena. "You must be that pest my men and late husband were having trouble for the last couple of months... I shall remedy that."

Xena growls, her eyes flashing as she hears Bahamut's purr to try and calm her.

"Queen Ulara, if I may have a word. Let us spare each other lots of bloodshed and just have a chat before we fight, is that alright." Scanlan proposes to the Queen taking her attention from Xena.

There was a moment of silence before she says. "Talk, small annoying creature, and perhaps it'll delay the inevitable."

He clears his voice, keeping his own face straight. "My friends and I have come- We've come from the above world. The normal world, let's say, to your fine kingdom down here below."

The group other than Kima and Xena bit their tongues from either groaning, laughing, or facepalming.

"And we were on a mission, we're a bit of- I don't want to brag, but we're a bit of an elite task force, sent in by kingdoms and kings that you probably haven't heard of the way down below. But anyway, I'll spare you."

As he talks Vax is creeping along the back of the tent closest to him and curving around as Tiberius rubs the earring at his ear and says calmly.

"Keep it simple, will you? I mean really, calm down."

Scanlan gives a slight nod that he got it and continues. "My lady, we have come on a mission. To save someone that you were holding captive and another you have been hunting."

Xena does her best to hide her confusion. _Wait what? Lady Allura didn't know I was with Lady Kima why would she- oh... huh_

The gnome was involving her in the saving in case the Queen tried to hold her or exchange her.

"We have completed our mission, and in the melee, in that hovel, you called a palace back there, we lost one of our own, and we would like him back. Now, I'll make it very simple because my fellows are begging me to keep things simple. It's a simple binary choice; you can all die right now, or you can turn over our friend and will probably, probably leave you in peace. I would promise, but I don't make promises to bitches."

"Ooh! Oh snap!" a voice echo in the caves making some look around themselves in confusion.

"Oh shit!" Keyleth says as she moves in behind the pillar near Grog... but underground.

Her eyes, too had a greenish glow to them as did the others, as she glares at Scanlan. "You took my king from me. Come and slew him in is his own throne room. You took something I love, I take something you love. He's mine now. And I'm bringing him to his greater destiny."

At which point, a loud, horrendous shrieking sound pierces the ears of everyone in the vicinity as appearing out of a ripple of energy, a once-invisible mind flayer foes cascading out a mind blast that just tears through the entire group but Tiberius. Keyleth and Vax.

**Intelligence Check:**

**Scanlan – 21**

**Percy – 16**

**Vex – 14**

**Trinket – 8**

**Xena – 15+5= 20**

Vex, Kima, and Pike double over, Vex clutching her skull, as the pain is too much to bear and find themselves unable to actually draw commands to their muscles for them to function. Trinket falls to the ground with a horrible groan, digging his nose into the actual dirt to try and find a way to escape this piercing mental agony.

**ROLL FOR INITIATIVE!**

**Percy – 22**

**Tiberius – 21**

**Xena – 18 +3= 21**

**Vax – 21**

**Scanlan – 18**

**Keyleth – 16**

**Vex – 13**

Aiming his gun, Percy whips around, the mind flayer in his face, and shoots. First-round the form shifts and he can feel the energy of its oppressive mental force, causing his hand to miss its aim with each pull of the trigger. He spins the barrel again on the Pepperbox and hits him doing little to no damage, with a snarl of frustration the second shot actually clips part of its chest and as it tries to use its psychic abilities to resist the bullet, it still pierces its chest in the side.

(Again Matt with your sides!)

Missing everything vital, still causing it to make a painful hissing sound, sucks in the air for a moment as Percy takes this chance to run left and out of its vision as he can.

Tiberius peeks over a little and goes. "Ooh!"

As they're all sitting there, looking ready to pounce for their series of battles, all of the sudden there's a slight streak of reddish energy in the distance as they all are watching.

"Oh shit." Xena swore.

It looks almost like the fire pit behind them just explodes in this giant fiery ball of red, angry magical fury. Aerin ends up being thrown to the side and his entire body gets thrown about 20-30 feet across from the force of the explosion, landing on the ground lifeless on the ground, a burnt cinder.

Xena closes her eyes and prays for peace for Aerin's soul and forgiveness, then looks to the now severely burnt Bromar looking at his hands now grunting in pain and barely standing.

She looks to see Lady Kima still clutching her head and with Bahamut's purrs gone from her head Xena didn't know what to do, but she did glare at the smiling Queen.

Seeing the Queen smile at Xena, Tiberius forms an ice knife into his hand and chuck it in a straight line towards her the shards of the ice from the back of Ulara's torso explodes into this spray of jagged ice chunks. It pierces continuously the right side of Bromar, who falls to the ground, grasping at his wounds and trying to stand to his feet before falling over unconscious right there.

Xena watches as she can only guess, the last of her comrades who came with Lady Kima and he moved no more, she felt tears form in her eyes looking down at him, once more praying to Bahamut to take these souls to their ancestors and give them the peace that they deserved.

"Well, they were completely useless." Queen Ulara says grinning at Xena. "Much like you were for them though right? I mean it took you months to even come close to us and only to see them die in front of you now, you will see you precious peck over there die by her brains being sucked out of her head. So much for the power of the gods being on your side hmm?"

Scanlan frowns, looking to the elf and dwarf and looking back to Xena who looks... mournful. He sighs, if Lady Kima and her had said something they could have saved the two, but what done is done however that didn't stop him from glaring at the queen.

 _Lord Bahamut, please just this once, give me the strength to bring this bitch down, please?_ She prayed, hoping for a sign, and gets it.

Taking a deep breath, she let two tears from her face and turn to the queen bitch snarling like the angry beast they told her to be as she feels a power course through her body.

Xena charges towards the Queen in the name of those lost she cast Crusader's Mantle on herself and her already flaming sword making it look like she was holding a sword made out of flames as she leaps and arches the sword down at the Queen, and takes a second slash at her screaming her rage.

Grog comes back to consciousness, in extreme pain as his entire body is immersed briefly in flame. Blinking in surprise at the severely pissed off and glowing Half-orc lady with golden eyes and wild flying black hair charges at the Queen with a thunderous roar and flaming sword... Grog wasn't gonna lie... he was at half-mast at the sight.

Queen Ulara cries out in pain as the radiance from the sword pierces her skin and burns her hair and some of her clothes as she backs away to put them out as she glares painfully at the Half-Orc before her.

"That," Xena growls as she pants. "Was for those you and your cunt of a king have tortured and killed!"

To say the least everyone not in pain from the shriek before was slack-jawed, or whatever mind flayers do when they are in shock, at the raging paladin with her snarling face and flaming sword as she tore the Queen a new one.

And those close to her felt a sudden boldness awaken inside of them as they watch the glow from Xena shine through.

Vax shook his head from his gaping decides that since Xena had the queen covered goes for the mind flayer as he runs over to Clarota and throws a keen dagger towards him.

After finishing a mind blast and gaping at the pissed half-orc, it begins to eye what its next target would be as Percy goes running off to the side, it looks over at its three freshly-stunned prey and begins to lumber over towards what looks to be either Pike or Vex, but before it gets a chance to advance though, out of nowhere a dagger pierces it in the shoulder. It looks at it and it grasps for it. As it tries to pull the dagger out, the dagger disappears in a plume of black shadow energy back into Vax's hand.

"Oh sorry asswipe!" he shouts as he throws another dagger.

This one, as it flies through the air, the creature actually puts up a little bit of a psychic field for a second and it stops its momentum. It does still manage to strike, but with nowhere near the damage, Vax was hoping for.

She pulls back, beginning to form a crackling bolt of energy they have seen once before in the throne room that shot out and hit them all at once with a severe amount of damage and she was looking straight at Xena as she does this.

As Scanlan, feeling bolder as he ever had before in battle! Charges forward, past Xena, pulling out his enchanted hand cone and shout the incantation towards her with an angry glare. "OOH GET LOST MOTHER FUCKER!"

As he puts his arms around her as he shouts. "It's not you, it's me!"

She looks down at him with a look of confusion and completely caught off guard frustration before her entire form blinks out of existence and is no longer visible to anyone. With that, he sends inspiration to Grog cause he knows he needs it.

As the flames die down, the glowing angry hot woman and watched as Scanlan rush up and completely, as far as he knew, disintegrate the duergar queen who took him and has been torturing him these past few days.

"Wow." Grog gapes.

Keyleth at this time phases through the ground and pops up next to Grog.

As Grog looks over from Scanlan with this smiling face, this giant mountain of rock and earth just lumbers up out of the ground.

"Oh shit!" Grog gasps.

Keyleth, definitely forgetting that she was speaking rock says. "Grog, it's okay. It's Keyleth."

Not knowing the language of rock Grog simply lays there screaming in terror. The earth thing picks him up and is now being carried by a giant lumbering earth elemental that is bringing him under its arm.

Vex shakes off the pain sighing in relief that the pain was over. And slowly goes over to Trinket who was still digging into the dirt in pain. Pike dropped her shield, mace, and is clutching the side of her head, screaming silently as the pain wracking her brain from the inside.

"Pike!" Scanlan cries out.

The last duergar rushes towards the one who just banished his queen, his physical form begins to swell with strength and frustration. He swings at Scanlan with war pick-

"Oh, don't hit me!" Scanlan sings as he casts cutting words.

Shockingly enough it works!

He stops for a second, confused, he puts his war pick down for a second. "Wait—agh! You gnome!"

Doesn't know why he listened to him and is equally frustrated with himself now as he is Scanlan.

Kima yells the effect off, looks around at the two dead bodies, Xena's still glowing form as tears roll down her face, and turns around, holding the greatsword, staring off at the mind flayer.

Clarota coalesces a giant ball of electrical energy into his hand and releases an arcing blast of lightning energy towards the mind flayer, who takes the hit but is still standing.

Tiberius sees the flayer begin to coalesce the same arcane energy, and for a moment he sees a spark of some sort of door beginning to open. Stepping from behind the rock releases this torrent of sparkling arcane energy that closes the gate entirely and the mind flayer for a second looks confused before it, across the way to wherever it came from and sees nothing.

"Oh so sorry." Vax says to the flayer making said flayer look over at him with narrowed eyes.

"So sad, so sad." Percy adds shaking his head.

Having enough of the comments, it turns and glides away. Percy begins to run by, aiming the Pepperbox at the duergar and shoots at him twice.

The duergar still burnt from the fireball and looking angry and frustrated that Scanlan somehow caused him to somehow lower his guard when he attacked him last. He gears up for another strike down at this tiny gnome character in front of him.

The first blow hits the war pick, knocking it out of his hands, he looks over confused, at Percy as the second blast hits him right in the side of the face, completely destroying the side of his face entirely. A wet gurgle as the duergar slumps forward almost on top of Scanlan but he steps out of the way as his body hits the ground.

Tiberius frowns at the runaway flayer. "Where do you think you're going?"

He fires the beam over to the flayer, it detonates in the distance, safely far enough away from the party as the mind flayer is drifting away glances over his shoulder, his... greenish glowing green eyes go wide for a second, cartoon style. "Oh shit!"

BOOM

Rocks cascade off the top of the wall, hitting the ground with a force as the entire tunnel shakes and rocks. As the smoke and the flames dissipate, all that was left is this pile of the blackened creature on the ground from where the mind flayer once stood.

While everyone cheers, Lady Kima walks over to Xena. "Hey, hey Xena? You alright?"

"Months."

"What?"

"Months I had wondered these tunnel, months I had entered Emberhold to find you and the others and found only dead bodies and no sign of you, months to steel myself for when I find your body... months I was in the darkness, wondering if I will become these abomination if I eat the duergar to stay alive." Xena says, not really looking at anything but the darkness beyond. "I asked him to guide me in these dark times, so I may not falter to such evil Lady Kima... all I got was smack to the face as this group just enter the Underdark a week or so, found you, took out the king while I sat in the corner thinking about what I will eat next time."

"Xena." Xima whimpers softly, about to reach out for her ex-pupil when.

"Fellows! Gather around, she might come back at any moment and we should be here to surround her when she comes back." Scanlan calls to the others.

Kima looks over at them then looks back at the now tense Xena and orders. "Sit this one out Xena, take a breather, we will deal with the queen."

Xena frowns at Kima as she walks away narrowing her eyes at where the queen disappeared into... and grips her still flaming sword.

Pike watching everyone do their stuff walks over to Xena, looking up at her before reaching out and grabbing her hand in Lady Kima's place waiting till she looked down at her.

"It wasn't your fault Xena." She tells her. "Lord Bahamut may have done more than a guide in those tunnels all those months. You are not at fault for the death or the thoughts. If you were Sarenrae would have harmed you for touching my holy symbol."

"It is not a question if I am good or bad... Pike." She says looking away. "It's about what the point was for me to be here in the first place if I cannot even protect Lady Kima... or the others."

The two became quiet. "...Maybe to save us?"

Xena snorts. "From what I see, your lot would have been just fine."

"Um, excuse me, giant rock this. Could you perhaps get me out of this shit?" the goliath asks his ...saviour.

Vax, who had been watching Xena and Kima's little chat a bit along with Xena's hikes towards Grog as everyone was either getting ready for Queen Ulara's return or helping Grog get out of his situation.

"Grog! Are you hurt?" Vex asks.

"I can't tell yet."

"She can come back at any second hurry up!" Scanlan tells them.

Grog groans in relief as he feels the lock release pulls the rest of the iron bars off of him as he gets up. Just at that moment Ulara, Queen Ulara reappears again.

"Hold her!" Scanlan shouts.

Tiberius cast hold person, it fades away from her, Scanlan cast hold on her as well, with the wave of her hand the chains break from her.

In her frustration, Vex Hunter Mark's the queen and shoots as Keyleth bounds up behind her and as she looks over her shoulder, the arrow piercing her shoulder. So along with those and the wounds she got from Xena from before she was looking pretty rough.

Her eyes go wide.

"It would be in your best interest to not struggle." Vex says to her frowning.

At which point, the giant arms behind her and the earth elemental lifts her off her feet as she groans in pain, Her feet dangling angrily in the air.

A couple of seconds pass before she pants saying. "Alright. So, let's make a deal shall we?"

Vex laughs in disbelief. "You're in no place to negotiate."

"Yes, we have everything that we have come here for. What can you possibly offer us that we don't already have?" Scanlan asks crossing his arms.

"Valid point. What purpose do I serve? You should let me go." She looks to them all.

"Let you go?! I tried to talk to you and you almost tried to get us killed!" Scanlan says in disbelief.

"Vox Machina, our purpose here is done, but Lady Kima and Xena, they have further to go, and I am curious your highness if you know anything about this K'Varn chap or gal or thing? We have heard his or her name. They seem to be famous in these parts. I was wondering if you know anything about K'Varn." Vax speaks up beside his sister with a raised eyebrow at the little queen.

"... I know many things." She leans forward a little bit and spits right in Vax's face.

"Oh, Wonderful!" Vex smiles predatorial as she looks over at Clarota. "Clarota, do you want to suck her mind?"

Keyleth tightens her grip on the queen.

"Vex'ahlia, would you come up and talk to this-"

"I'm already here."

Clarota, at which steps forward and brings his hand up, this voice echos through all their minds communally. "Now... tell us what you know."

His eyes flicker with a strange blue energy and Ulara's eyes glaze over and fill with the same blue arcane energy that Clarota was briefly having drift out of his eyes. Ulara stops struggling and the mouth goes into this weird grin for a second and just calmly says. "Liberation. Liberation is what it brings us. Liberation from physical limitation. Liberation from the pain of the light."

She looks up as she says that. "We all shall rise. K'Varn, the Guiding Darkness. The sun shall hold no sway and we shall walk the surface once again."

"What is all this poppycock?" Tiberius shouts.

"What is K'Varn?" Vex asks the Queen.

"K'Varn came to us, showed us how through unification we could be better than we ever were." she tells them.

Vex puts out a hand to try and stop her from talking further and says. "I didn't ask what he did, I asked what he is."

"K'Varn-" There's a shudder in her body and her eyes go from this strange blue color to this strange swimming black that covers each eye. She shakes for a second, her shoulders shift and Keyleth clutches her in her arms. As she does, the blackness now has that same green glow that the rest of them had, but it's framing the pools of shadow that her eyes have become.

Her jaw falls slack for a second and the voice comes through. "Ah, there! There we are, I can see you all so clearly."

"Not me!" Tiberius yells.

"You'd be surprised Dragonborn."

"Oh! You're pretty good."

"And don't think I have forgotten you, Xena Sharptooth, though you have been hidden from my eyes I know you are there." the voice chuckles.

Xena as if she wasn't tense enough snaps her head to the group frowning at it as Pike's hold on her hand tightens.

"Word has reached my ears, but to see you, to look upon you is everything. Come. You are close, yes? Come to me, as my guests. I invite you. The temple doors are open. I'd like to see you in person." It invites the group with a smile.

Tiberius stutters. "Can you be specific? Like, do we go left, or right, or... specific."

Xena looks at the Dragonborn oddly and questions his sanity.

"You're already on the right path. Come to me. You are my treasured guests." The blackness in the eyes begins to intensify and begins to spill like black tears from the face.

Her body shudders before the back convulses and then falls limp, a little bit of smoke rises from the mouth. Vex goes to check for a pulse, she has definitely given up the ghost, noting that Vex begins to search her for goods.

"You're looting her already?!" Scanlan exclaims before shaking his head and goes towards one of the tents to look.

"What a mercenary!" Vax laughs wiping the last of the spit from his face as he picks at the charred remains of the illithid.

The guys laugh as they glance around to find other than the usual assortment of objects, and much other stuff on the bodies.

"Pike, can you heal me? Because I look like a game of tic-tac-toe?" Grog asks walking up to Pike and Xena.

Vex looks over. "I know, we should check on Grog!"

"Oh, no, don't think of me, please. I've been fucking missing for two weeks!" He shouts rolling his eyes.

"Actually it is more like a day and a half." Xena corrects coming over and walks over to him. "Here allow me to heal you Grog, by the way, my name is Xena Sharptooth of... well wherever."

"Oh, you are a badass healer like Pike? Sweet!" He exclaims excitedly. "Also might I say your fire sword is fucking amazing!"

Xena blinks up at him and gives him a small smile. "Well, thanks."

"You're standing up? I'm so happy you're back with us!" Vex coos walking over to him and holding his arm.

The earth around Keyleth's form seems to crumble, like a layer of rock. It hits the ground and dissolves into the stone beneath her.

"See I told you it was Keyleth!" Vex points to Grog.

"Were you watching Grog? You weren't watching." Keyleth sigh in disappointment.

Grog shakes his head. "No, totally was. It was amazing what you did. Could you do it again?"

"After we take a short rest." She says with a nod.

Grog nods as Pike come up to add to Xena's healing but Lady Kima pushes her aside and says. "I've got this."

Walks up and this divine glowing energy like Xena if not a bit calmer feeling.

"Please touch me." Grog pleads to two Paladins.

Xena snorts closing her eyes and shaking her head in amusement and concentrates on the silly goliath.

They fill their hands as the warmth fills Grog's torso. With both using Lay on Hands ability, Lady Kima of Vord and Xena Sharptooth heal Grog.

"Heals everything." He exclaims happily.

"Thank you, Kima, Xena." He says smiling at them.

Kima walks over to the dwarf corpse as Vex finished inspecting it and gives it a look over as well and shakes her head looking over to Xena who is once again frowning and crossing her arms, not looking at her.

"Xena." Kima says firmly. "It is not your fault."

"What?" Vex asks looking between them. "What's not her fault? What did you see?"

"This was one of our companions." She sighs.

Vex gasps. "Oh no."

"Well, judging by the scars across his body, he had already been made thrall of one of the illithid... Most likely the one that we finished back there. Xena as you know got separated from us and had been searching for us in this god's forsaken place for heavens how long she is... not happy with the results it has given her." she explains.

"No kidding," Keyleth says looking down at the late Queen who still had the outcome of Xena's anger.

Grog seeing Xena as she is, frowns thoughtfully and puts a gentle hand on her shoulder, and doesn't say anything.

"There wasn't much to really bring him back at this point, I fear." Lady Kima adds.

"Is that what they would have done to Grog?" Vex asks worriedly.

As they all look at Grog, he has hundreds upon hundreds of small scars across his body: fresh wounds that have just barely sealed. It looks like they've done a number on him with a bunch of small blades, hooks, razors- it's hard to tell, but he is just coated with small cuts.

"It's been interesting." He says.

"You look really manly now." Vex says trying to cheer him up.

Grog double takes on his wi- I mean Vex. "Now?"

"Shall we take a short rest to... pull ourselves together?" Percy asks everyone.

"I wanted to talk to my team... without Kima or Xena." Keyleth notifies the group.

Xena frowns before looking over to Kima. "Come on Lady Kima apparently her highness wishes to gossip with her ladies in waiting without us peasants about, let's bury our companions shall we?"

"Indeed we shall." Kima agrees walking away from the group with Xena.

"I will join you!" Scanlan says joining them.

"You be nice!" Grog shouts after Scanlan.

Lady Kima gives Scanlan a concerned look.

"There's this thing on my body. I thought maybe you could take a look at it and you could tell me if it's good or bad?" Scanlan tells her.

Xena on the other hand goes around the rock and stealth back to where the others are and listens in.

**Stealth Check: 13+7= 20**

"I think we should get out of here." Keyleth says immediately to the group.

"What? Why?" Vex asks.

_Why am I not surprised that the princess is abandoning the ship._

Keyleth sighs. "Well, we've got Grog. We've got Kima and Xena for a bonus apparently. We came here to find Kima. That was our mission, I don't trust her."

"We found her but we cannot leave without her." Vex points out giving her a look. "And now you want to abandon them?!"

"We were sent here to bring back Kima." Vax repeats. "She's not going to come with us until we've killed K'Varn and Xena doesn't look like she will not go anywhere without Kima."

"Keyleth, what's your problem with Kima, even Xena?" Vex asks.

"Ya?" Grog asks.

"Well, look. She's been... She just gave me the wrong vibe, up front." the druid said.

Vex deadpans at her. "Okay, the vibe... What did she do?"

"She's been very rude-"

_WHEN?!_

"She's been very tortured. Tortured Keyleth." Vex reminds. "And Xena has been lost in the Underdark near starving and no one there for her until we... well until Trinket came along."

_Thanks at least someone has our back._

"Right. But look what happened? She's brought countless people down here, only to meet their end." Keyleth says.

"Well, none of those people are us." Tiberius points out.

"Right." Keyleth sighs. "What-"

"They're dead because they got captured." Vex says crossing her arms. "We're stronger."

"Do you know something we don't, Keyleth?" Vax asks.

"Look, all I know is that only a fool believes that his path is the most virtuous." She states.

_Is she fu- religion perspective? She is throwing away the lives of Kima and me including the thousands because of her view on PALADINS!?_

Clarota steps up and says. "I wholeheartedly agree. She is unstable and cannot be trusted in this state, and I fear what the half-orc will do if she finally snaps after being her for so long."

_Of course, you are fucking you you taint sniffing whore!_

"Hold on a second, that's unfair." Vax lifts an arm and points at Clarota.

"Why?" Keyleth asks.

_This bi-_

"It has been a long road Keyleth, I know you had a hard time. We all have, I know we're miles below the surface of the world, but we're together. We are family and everyone here is here for you as you have been for us. Now, I say we camp for the night inside this schmuck's tent. We stay here, we rest up, sleep on it, and see how we're all feeling in the morning. We're here for Keyleth, and we'll protect you as you have protected us. You've got a family with us." Vax tells her.

Keyleth starts to cry making Xena roll her eyes. "How do we know we are doing the right thing? We've killed a lot of people, you guys. We've killed a lot of people."

"... Who in this world is without fault? Who hasn't made mistakes?" Vax recovers, clearing his throat. "We certainly all have." he says.

"Keyleth, we're keeping him, K'Varn, from killing even more." Vex adds

"How do we know we're not just interfering with issues that aren't our own? We didn't know any of this until we came down here, and look she wants to take the horn. She wants the horn, and she wants to take it back for herself." Keyleth whimpers

_Lies!_

"The bottom line is, all of this insanity is going to bubble up to the surface if someone doesn't stop it." Vax says firmly.

"It already has been." Vex reminded them. "All those creatures that have been coming up, Keyleth?"

"Remember, think back. It has already begun and no one is here to stop it except for Vox Machina. Us." Vax says.

"We promise, we will heed your warning." Percy promises. "But we can't run, we will heed it, though."

"We've got your back."

"We made a deal." Clarota reminds them.

"I understand you Clarota, and I'm on your side-"

_Wait... She would turn her back on Lady Allura's friend but take fucking noodle faces side?!_

"I swear. But a lot of people- there have been a lot of murderers who said they did the things that they did because their gods told them to do it. Right?" She asks looking around at her group.

"We'll be cautious, and we'll have you to protect us." Percy tells her.

Tiberius dissipate invisibility and approaches Keyleth. "Your highness. By the honor of all Stormwinds, I will let nothing happen to you. I swear it. I will fight until my death, and I have ways, of course, to get us all out of here whenever I damn well please, Do not worry."

"I just have a bad feeling. This horn can't make it back up to the surface. You guys have to promise me that."

Vex nods. "We'll keep the horn from leaving."

"She wants to take it back. Why? If it's that bad, why does she want it?" Keyleth asks them.

"That maybe so, but the evil that is brewing beneath the surface of the world will stretch up to everything we know. And I know that you have made mistakes, I have certainly made mistakes. That is to live. There is more at stake right now, and we are the front line. We're the only ones who can stop it. Mistakes are all right." He assures her.

"The god of darkness will blot out the light." Percy recites looking over to Keyleth.

"I just hope we're not the darkness." She says.

Tiberius jumps in. "Oh, do you need light?"

Everyone winces as light suddenly spills into the cavern before them.

"Thanks Tiberius." Vex says adjusting her eyes to the light.

"Did you go deaf while Lady Kima was explaining that to you or was you more worried about the blood getting under your nail?" Xena asks, crossing her arms as everyone jumped.

Keyleth went pale.

Vax moves to the front of Keyleth with his hands up to her. "Xena we were just-"

"Planning Lady Kima and my demise while you let thousands of people die cause miss cry me a river princess doesn't want blood on her hands?" She asks crossing her arms. "Oh, I completely understand that."

She looks back at Keyleth and growls.

"Now listen here princess." She hisses, pushing the male elf aside. "You will kill, and you will continue to kill, be it for your 'family' or your idea of justice so don't go sneering at us because we are following orders in the name of Bahamut who wants to keep your pretty little forests safe. K'Varn may very well have the horn right now and you want to leave cause you are not feeling the sun on your skin? You who whines about death would cause death over thousands... because you may lose your tan?"

Keyleth looks away from the glare, crossing her arms and sniffling.

"You may have these men to please you but I will not tolerate this behavior, meaningful or not, we need to kill K'Varn and any other son of a bitch that gets in the way. If you yourself want to leave now go, ask Master Stormwinds to send you home so you can sit in that cushy palace of yours and wait if we succeed your comrades will return in one piece and you would be known as the coward that ran away or, we fail and you will be known as the coward who killed the world... because she didn't want to dirty her dress." She says before backing off. "Your choice princess. Along with the rest of you, you may go, tell Lady Allura of your actions, Lady Kima, and will continue on alone and do the right thing in saving the world. However, if you do come, I will never trust you with my back nor Lady Kima's, one toe out of line, and your head will learn to fly... am I clear."

"There is no need for this Xena." Pike says looking at Xena sadly. "We will help, I had visions just like Lady Kima to come down here, we have to do this guys, Keyleth."

"Of course we will." Vex promises before Keyleth could say anything to make Xena angrier.

"..." She looks to each of them and her eyes land on Vex. "Then there won't be a problem."

"There's one more thing I need you to look at, it's just..." Scanlan comes in following after an exasperated Kima as he Polymorphs himself, giving himself a gigantic dick, and he slowly pull down his pants.

Xena blinks before slowly looking back at the others who chuckle nervously.

Kima immediately turns around and walks back to the group and says. "Okay!"

"What did I say!" Grog asks Scanlan. "You can't keep it in for two seconds, not that I blame you! My god!"

"I think we are all a little frayed." Vax says looking from his group to Xena. "I think we need to rest. Let's set up camp."

"I agree. We have quite a journey ahead of us." Kima nods pause for a moment and looks over to Xena. "Xena, come down here for a moment."

Xena walks over to Kima and kneels down, before she can open her mouth Kima smacks her upside the head harshly and swiftly.

"Ow, what the shit!?" Xena exclaims rubbing her head.

"I do not know what you said to them but making Miss Keyleth cry is not the way to go!" She scolds the girl.

"She already crying before I even got here!" She shouts.

"I do not care, you said something not kind and I must smack you, did you forget about this when you left." Kima asks with her hands on her waist.

Xena frowns, getting up and simply huffing before walking to the farthest tent from the group and enters it.

Kima sighs, looking over to the others. "I apologies for anything she said or done-"

"No." Pike says putting out a hand to her. "She was just trying to make us understand just how important your mission was."

Kima shakes her head with a grin. "By making you mean threatening to make your head fly?"

The group was silent.

"Yeah, she does that when she hasn't slept or eaten in days." She says rolling her eyes. "Back during training, she would neither eat nor sleep to get the training or orders she was given done. It used to drive me bonkers when she did that."

"Being down here in the dark probably didn't help?" Grog says bluntly looking back at the tent.

"... No." She says looking over to the tent with a sad face. "I guess not."

"We're not too far from Yug'Voril. Let us rest." Clarota pipes up getting everyone's attention.

Keyleth steps forward. "Kima. I... just wanted to apologize."

Kima gently smiles. "What for?"

"I... I came across too harshly that night." She says.

She puts her hand up and in a matronly way. "It's honestly not a worry. War is stressful, and all of us have been through a lot for this experience. I understand. I've been where you've been, and it's not uncommon to question everything around you, and with good reason: that's what keeps you alive. Were you to believe every person that crossed your path, you would have not have made it past your 15th season. I can assure you, as best as I can, that I mean the best for all of us. I just know if we don't do what we're here to do, far more people will suffer than the few I've brought down here to protect me and for me to protect. I am not asking for your trust. I'm just asking for your patience."

Keyleth sighs as she to looks over at the tent, thinking over what Xena had said and says. "Well, I can grant you that. Only if you promise to grant us respect in return because I feel you were a little untrusting of what we were doing up front, which I once again understand."

"You caught me at a rough time." Kima says, rubbing the back of the neck.

Keyleth giggles. "Well same here."

"Well, thank you-"

"I'm sorry, Scanlan what is that?" Vax interrupts, pointing at Scanlan's crotch.

"Oh you mean my-"

"That's bedtime is what that is, alright everyone, let's go ahead and find ourselves a rest!" Kima changes the subject just as quickly.

With that everyone goes to camp for the evening; Keyleth on the other hand took another breath and makes her way to where Xena had claimed her tent.

"Xena." She starts, kneeling down on the ground in front of the tent. "I would also like to apologize to you, you have been nothing but kind to my family, even after everything you have been through. I am sorry for the way I have acted with Kima and you, I am just scared and I have every right to be scared but I shouldn't have taken it out on you two."

There was silence on the other side, and before Keyleth thought to try again later she hears.

"Next time try to say something to your group about it, they are there for a reason."

Keyleth smiles. "Yeah... yeah I know, hey they can help you to you know? I know we've just gotten to know each other but they are good listeners... especially Trinket."

She was proud of herself when she heard Xena chuckle a little. "I'll get on that... have a good night, princess."

"Goodnight... Wolfgirl."


	8. Chapter 2 – Yug'voril Uncovered Part 2

After an evening’s rest, taking respective turns keeping watch, everyone comes to consciousness once more. Xena found herself nearly suffocated by Trinket who has apparently left the twins in the middle of the night and came to sleep with the lone half-orc who isolated herself from the others.

“Oof!” She grunts. “Trinket, I need air!”

With a groan Trinket rolls off of her with a yawn.

Free of the bear’s weight on her, she takes in her needed oxygen before sitting up groaning looking over at the bear. “Shouldn’t you be with your twins? Vex is probably worried about you.”

“Trinket? Trinket? Has anyone seen Trinket!?” she hears Vex asks worriedly.

“Trink!” Vax calls.

Xena gives the bear a looks as the bear actually looks sheepish as he gets up and makes his way out of the tent. Shaking her head Xena goes to where she had placed her armor after cleaning it, thankfully since her sword flames up and burns away whatever blood or gunk from its victims she just had to sharpen it. She stops in front of it for a moment, staring into space before letting out a sigh, and reaches up to grasp her holy symbol as she goes down her knees.

“Well if Lady Kima is mad at me I can only assume you are too?” she asks quietly.

Nothing.

“Great, look I- hell you know me, and can you blame me?! They were planning on leaving us, leaving the world to burn because she-”

A growl interrupts her and she can feel eyes piercing down at her like a tail wrapping around her.

“... You want me to apologize to them? Seriously? I highly doubt they will-”

_It’s worth a try._

Well shit, when they actually use words.

Taking another deep breath she waits till the tail leaves her before she gets up and turns only to freeze as Scanlan and Pike stare at her.

“If we hadn’t seen crazy shit before.” Scanlan says. “I would be shitting my pants right now.”

Pike smacks him on the arm while Xena stays quiets watching the two.

The silence lasts a few moments before Scanlan clears his throat. “Ah about that apology-”

“Scanlan!” Pike scolds.

Xena sighs. “Right, let me just get my armor on and I will talk to the group.”

She turns away and reaches for her armor.

“Do you need help cause I am very good at ugh!”

Xena looks over her shoulder to See Pike had dragged the bard away and outside of the tent. If there is one companion besides Trinket and Grog, Pike had to be her favorite.

It took a couple of minutes to get her gear on and sword before making her way outside and to the group and they gather around saying good morning, but go silent at the sight of a slightly more cleaner Xena standing before them.

Xena looks at each of the members of the Vox Machina then at Lady Kima before crossing her arms and bites her lip.

“I... apologize for my behavior.” She chokes out after a while.

Surprisingly it is Percy who steps towards her. “Lady Xena, after what you heard yesterday, I would be surprised you didn’t come to Lady Kima’s aid and taught a thing or two.”

“Yeah.” Scanlan nods. “Don’t piss off Half-orc paladins or they will kabob you with their flaming sword of righteousness.”

He got a smack for that.

“No.” Percy disagrees. “About keeping promises and seeing something through, but yeah mostly not to have you mad at us.”

“But we will do what we can to survive.” Vax adds. “If Keyleth tells us we need to leave we will knock you both unconscious and take you back to Lady Allura if we must.”

“But.” Vex steps in front of her brother glaring at him. “It will not come to that. This is bad news for everyone below and above the surface, we will stop K’Varn, we will get that horn away from him and we will help you and Kima where we can.”

“Yeah I owe that bastard a few scars.” Grog growls excitedly.

Lady Kima stands beside Xena. “Xena, I do not know what happened yesterday and I will not ask, Miss Keyleth and I made peace after you left so whatever animosity you have, you need to let it go.”

Easier said than done.

However, Xena decides to keep to herself unless spoken to otherwise, and from the light purr in from her symbol the old lizard accepted the compromise.

Clarota has been anxiously sitting at the edge of the company facility, looking deeper into the tunnel ahead, keeping his eyes peeled in the darkness.

He seems slightly impatient as everyone is waking up and goes. “Come! Ahead, we shall find it’s Yug’Voril.”

“That, that your city?” Vex asks looking over at him.

“Beautiful city of secrets.” he says.

Vex looks confused. “I thought your people had thrown you out, why so eager to get back?”

Clarota is silent for a moment before saying. “Without the colony, I serve no purpose. I am wandering, aimless. I wish to return to the Elder Brain.”

Vax looks over his shoulder chewing on some jerky. “And to be fair, he was only thrown out once K’Varn took over the Elder Brain, correct?”

The mindflayer shakes his head. “No, they threw me out long before, for my gift.”

A little spark of arcane blue filter out of his fingers in the air and then gone. “It is an abomination to my people. I am considered anathema, but to save them! To save my city, then they shall have me back a hero.”

Xena frowns thoughtfully as she stares at the mind flayer. Knowing exactly the feeling she knew, just knew the desperation to be accepted so she knows it was only a matter of time before he turns his back on them for his people.

“Five gold from all of you that he betrays us.” She says to Scanlan.

“Same.” Grog agrees to overhear.

Everyone turns and frowns at the two.

“And if they don’t?” Vex asks looking back at him.

“They will, I can sense it.” he assures her.

“Well, yes, it makes perfect sense, Clarota.” Tiberius says walking up beside him. “I would think they would grant you a hero’s welcome, as well.”

“If not, you have a home with us.” Vex tells him with a smile.

“You what?”

“We’ll what?”

Xena and Grog ask at the same time before looking at one another before fist-bumping.

Clarota nods to the she-elf. “Thank you... Forward, we will find shrouded in the forest of fungus our destination. Come.”

He begins to drift down into the dark tunnel further below and the others follow after him as Tiberius gets closer to Clarota and asks his questions.

“Are you using Levitation, or what? How are you--”

“So about that bet-”

“We are not betting for him to betray us-”

“Where is the fun in that?”

“She is saying no cause she knows he is going to betray you guys.”

“Not you?”

“He has no alliance with me, only you guys.”

“And I am not saying no to that I am saying no because he won’t betray us.”

“Then put it where your mouth is, only this time since Grog is with me on this makes it 10 gold.”

“I am no-”

“Done!”

“Agreed.”

“Vax!”

“Scanlan.”

“I will take that bet, Lady Xena.”

“Percy?!”

“It's alright Vex we are going to win this and she is going to be broke as fuck.”

“Uh huh, keep talking little man and the gold goes up to 20.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I have a barbarian goliath backing me up of course I would.”

“My god, you are hot when you are being evil!”

“Calm down Scanlan.”

“No, she is hot whatever she is doing I mean did you see when she charged that Queen, gods!”

“Thanks Grog! I guess?”

“So happy you are getting along with everyone Xena.”

“I can sense the sarcasm Lady Kima, calm down.”

As the group continues forward in silence, Clarota seems to be more chatty than usual, almost like the proximity is-- this excitement to him, instinctual.

As Clarota drifts. “Our people, we are a structured society.”

Grog and Xena seem to have zoned out at this point in time.

“Together, we provide for each other, broken into creeds, we function rather pleasantly.” and he drifts forward again at full pace.

“Clarota, seems pretty excited to get home, I’m worried about him.” Vex says to her brother.

Vax turns to his sister. “Worried for him? What, for his effect on the group?”

“You joining our bet Vex?” Xena conks back to the present, grinning at her.

Vex frowns. “No, I’m worried that they won’t take him back, what that will do to his state.”

Vax sighs. “Well, the bottom line is, he has a pretty clear goal at hand. Everything else will have to be figured out afterward.”

Tiberius still follow Clarota. “So is it-- do you do it with your mind, or is it just like-- were you all taught as a child to be able to levitate because it seems--”

“It’s inherent, much like your gifts. It’s just how we get around.” he says.

“Good to know understood.” Tiberius nods, not quite happy with the answer but accepts it none the less.

Grog walks over to Lady Kima grinning. “How’s that, that greatsword been treating you?”

She walks and she’s using it almost like a walking stick in the dirt as she takes a step. “You know, it’s served its purpose so far, I just... I wish that vault wasn’t lost. Leather isn’t my idea of defensive.”

A thought smacks into Xena and it takes a while to compromise it.

“Would you fancy a trade, Kima? I have elven chain mail if that would help you.” Vex suggests.

“Perhaps?” Kima says.

“I could take that leather armor off your hands?” Vex tells her.

“But you’ll be vulnerable, won’t you?” Scanlan asks.

“No actually, the chain mail isn’t right for me.” Vex frowns.

Kima thinks a moment. “Certainly.”

Before anyone could say anything Vex began to strip before everyone and their gods, Grog suddenly had paper and a pencil and began drawing as fast as he could at the naked sight of Vex. Vax winces in disgust and looks away while the other males gawked.

She looks specifically at Grog and says. “Perhaps we should find a-”

“OH BITCH TITS I mean not you Vex, your tits are lovely but my gods I am an idiot hold on!” Taking her bag of holding off her shoulder and placing it on the floor, she opens it and dives headfirst into the bag with her bottom sticking up in the air.

This time Scanlan and Grog began to draw the sight before them.

“This has got to be the best day ever!” Grog exclaims.

Vax took a peek over his shoulder and... can’t seem to look away.

“Thanks darling.” Vex smiles in amusement at the half-orc. “But why are you an idiot?”

“Because I stupidly forgot that I have Lady Kima’s armor.” her voice muffled in the bag.

“...What.” Lady Kima squeaks in surprise.

Xena then comes out of her bag and pulls out heavy plate armor with the arms and legs tied together by rope. “In my wandering, I came across some duergar things into the lava river... including some comrades, in my anger I killed them all and found your armor. To be honest, when I saw your armor I had thought... I thought you were lost to me Lady Kima... I had this plan to return to Emberhold and die a glorious death taking a few bastards with me but I thought of Lady Allura and imagining not getting any word from you... I couldn’t leave her wondering if have lived or died so I thought I would take your armor with me back to the surface and give it to her... so she had something of yours.”

Everyone was quiet, staring at the half-orc woman.

She blushes. “I didn’t even think that she would summon a search party, of course, silly me I--”

“Shut up you daft woman and come down here and hug me!” Lady Kima demands, throwing her sword to the side and pulls Xena to the ground, and hugs her.

With a grunt, she falls to her knees and lets her old mentor and friend hug her.

Lady Kima sniffles a bit and pulls back, wiping her eyes quickly before taking the armor from Xena and looks up at the half-naked elf woman. “Perhaps we’ll find a more modest place to swap, I may as well return the leather to you.”

“I can make you a modest spot to change?” Scanlan offers before looking over to Grog. “Grog, are you skinning a boar over there? What are you doing?”

“Yeah, that’s what they call it in some countries.” Grog says staring at the pictures he drew.

Xena being curious looks over her should and... where she was expecting stick figures she actually found pretty decent drawings.

They press forward deeper into the tunnel network the air begins to grow steadily colder and colder. The temperature, Xena begins to see her breath a little bit in the air.

“Hey Grog look!” She calls to the barbarian breathing through her nose for the steam to come out. “I am a dragon! Grrr!”

“Ha nice!” Grog exclaims blowing hot air and playing Dragons with Xena with everyone watches in amusement as Pike joins in for a while

“Hey Pike, perhaps we should heal Vax’s foot.” Scanlan says.

“Oh!” Pike exclaims clapping her hands together. “Yes, of course.”

She comes over and they take a slight break as Pike comes and sets Vax down.

“It’s not pretty to look at.” Vax warns.

“Wait, what happens to your foot?” Grog asks looking over.

“It got melted off.” Vex explains.

Vax takes his foot and places it near his sister again.

“Aw, come on not again!” she cries out.

“Oh my god!” Grog laughs for more than a minute before fixing his face. “That looks awful... really awful.”

Vax shrugs. “It’s fine, except the pinkie toe.”

Vex laughs. “He’s got a pinkie nubbin.”

Grog picks up his weapon. “You know, we can just take care of the whole thing right now if you want.”

“No! Grog, that defeats the purpose.” Tiberius was quick to say.

“No? Rash?.... alright.” Grog puts his weapon down.

Xena comes over to the cleric’s side reaches out for Vax’s hand only to hesitate, looking up into hazel brown eyes, they both stare at one another for a bit feeling the other one out before Vax slowly reaches a hand out to her with raised an eyebrow.

Taking a deep breath she reaches out and holds it and begins to hum as Pike got to work on it by gathering up her runes and casting; there is some progress is low, but some of the burn scarring from the dip in the magma is beginning to slowly subside. Fresh skin is beginning to show, but it’s still pretty rough.

“Clarota?” Vex says trying to take her mind off of her brother’s foot. “Are we plan on going to your village before we go see K’Varn, or are we going after K’Varn first? I’m confused.”

“K’Varn resides within the city, the temple.” He says.

“Oh, is he a mind flayer, then? I mean, is he like you?” She asks.

Clarota shakes his head. “I have not seen him myself, since I was cast out before he took the star, took my people under his spell.”

Percy looks up from cleaning his gun. “Just to be clear, the temple of what?”

He leans over for a second. “The temple, I don't know its original purpose. The City we acquired, we found, we took root. Yug’Voril existed long before our colony did.”

Acquired my ass. Xena thought, before realizing Pike was done and still holding Vax’s hand. “Ahem sorry.”

Before he gets to say anything she stands up and stands beside Grog who was very happy about it as he grins down at her.

“Okay.” Percy says. “That’s good to know, that’s very good to know. Thank you.”

“Very well.” He continues floating forward.

The air, still chilly, with steadily more and more moisture; the rock walls become less and less jagged, growing smoother from the endless years of condensation, mineral drip, and slow erosion begin to give that smooth inner cave looks to the outsides of this tunnel.

Vax falls in next to Keyleth. “Keyleth? Are you alright?”

“I’m doing okay.” She says.

“You are?” He confirms.

“Yeah... Why?”

“Everything we said last night and today before we left was true. We’re here for you.” He promises.

“I’m here for you, too.” She replies back with a smile.

“Son of a Bitch!” All of a sudden Grog starts dancing around throwing what appears to be dust in the air singing.

Percy smiles. “We missed our little flower girl.”

“I know.” Keyleth giggles. “So glad we have him back.”

“What did you call me?”

Percy simply smiles but in a quieter voice, he says into the earring. “When we get to the city, I need everyone to promise that we’re not going to enter the temple. No one rush in, no one be brash. No one makes a poor decision. We’re going to wait. No matter what happens, don’t enter the temple until we’ve all had a moment to figure out what’s happening.”

“No one be a yahoo.” Vax throws in looking at Grog.

“Agreed.” Tiberius nods.

“I think it’s a trap.” Keyleth says.

Percy looks at her. “If there’s going to be a trap, it’s going to be getting us into the temple.”

“He wants us, he wants us there.” She divulges.

Percy nods. “He literally invited us into the temple.”

“So don’t go into the temple.” Vex repeats.

Percy grins. “Understood excellent.”

Xena laughs a little at their not so secret whispers as she takes notice of the tunnel itself; the cavern is swaying back and forth a little the bit with this. As opposed to a straight path, the tunnel is beginning to arc left and right. There are little pockets and crevices beginning to show at certain points, and by that fun walk, there were small bits of bluish crystal jutting in small pockets out of the cracks in the rock.

Vex, reaches out and touch the crystal, and it’s cold to the touch, as is most of the stone wall and can see there’s condensation on it that gets on her fingers a bit. It’s smooth, except for the jagged points where the natural formation juts out. She tugs on the crystal a little bit, trying to find if there’s any place there that’s movable; the results are that it is pretty solid in that rock.

Percy found a loose one and studies it for a bit as the others look at the blue rocks as well.

“Are they what is keeping this place cold?” Xena wonders, touching one of the rocks.

“No.” Keyleth answers. “The temperature doesn’t seem different at all to the air.”

“Tiberius, these look like the crystals on your staff.” Vex remarks looking over her shoulder to him.

“Hmm?” He looks up from his spell-book, looking around. “Oh, ooh, yes! They’re pretty!”

Taking out a dagger, he begins chipping away a couple of chunks from the wall.

“I remember reading a book about this blue rock gem that gave people certain magic powers and they could only be mined by dwarves cause of their immunity to it and if they are careful, otherwise they went and lost their sense of self.” Xena says looking at the wall in admiration.

Everyone paused a second but since they didn’t feel anything but the bread crumbs of magic in them they continued on what they were doing.

Vax looks over. “Did you ever go down this far?”

Xena shakes her head. “No, I was trying to head up, not down.”

“Ah.”

“Actually, let’s grab a few chunks. I may have an idea for later.” Percy says look at them with a smile.

Grog goes over to a wall of crystals with his ax snarling as he hacks, making Xena watch on taken aback at Grog ferocity over a crystal wall.

“Thank you!” Percy should over the noise.

After a while Grog gathers shards and pieces, placing them onto some fancy robe they had in their own bag of holding, and wrapped it up tightly before putting it into the bag of holding.

“Alright I think we have enough let us continue forward shall we?” Percy tells the others

Grog walks over to Xena and hands a single shard about the size of her pinkie. “I figured if everyone else was getting some you would want one too.”

“Oh?... Thank you Grog.” She says smiling up at him.

He grins back before following the others, with Pike patting the back of his leg. Xena smiles looking down at the gem, before it turned into a frown, with a sigh she puts it in her pocket and runs after them.

About a half an hour further down this tunnel, both Vax and Vex simultaneously notice a narrow passageway that juts off to the left. However there is a large boulder, solid stone, that is wedged into this, blocking the passage.

“Oh what is it Vex?” Xena asks seeing her and her brother look to the left. “Do you smell shiny things?”

Vex narrows her eyes at her but gives a grin.

“Only one way to find out, Grog! We need you over here.” Vax hails.

“What?” Grog looks up from his bag of holding.

“Could you possibly move this very large, very heavy boulder for us?” Vex asks.

Vax looks over to the bard. “Scanlan you as well.”

Scanlan looks over a little confused as to why he was being asked but nods. “Of course.”

“I need your help.” Grog tells him with a smirk making Scanlan chuckle.

“This seems to be a fairly--” Vax was explaining before Grog came in.

He grabs the boulder, gets underneath and lifting with the knees, puts the weight on his back, and with a groan begins to try and lift it.

“Ah push it, push it real good! Push it!” Scanlan cheers for him along with Percy.

With a resounding scraping sound and a large crack, some of the rocks that’s wedged in a break off and tumble to the sides. Xena was quick to grab Pike, who had come over to help assist Grog, and pull her away before any of the rock hit her.

Grog gets the boulder free and now clutching it on top of him and it is really heavy. Tiberius tried to be helpful and casts mage hand to give the boulder a push... the wrong way. Grog loses his balance over the boulder as it’s now shoved off its axis. It falls behind him, slamming into the wall blocking half the passage, and it may have tweaked something in his back a little in the process.

Percy facepalms as Xena slowly looks over to Tiberius with a raised eyebrow while he looks abashed scratching the back of his neck.

“Oh, Grog, how’s your back?” Vex looks over concerned.

He rolls over onto his stomach and asks. “Trinket, can you step on my back?”

“Trinket, give him a massage, he’s really good at it!” Vex offers with a smile.

Now Xena looks to Percy who still has a hand to his face. “I’m sorry but Trinket gives massages?”

“It is a long story.”

Trinket steps up, push on him with the bear claws.

“Make biscuits, Trinket, Make biscuits on Grog’s back.” Keyleth reminds him with a smile.

With a sounding crack and Grog sigh of relief, Xena makes her way over to him. “You alright there?”

“Ugh thank god.” He says getting up and rubbing Trinket’s head in thanks before looking down at Xena and smiled. “No problem... but if you want to lay your hands on me...”

Xena snorts. “Nice try Grog, you are fine.”

She gives the slightly disappointing Grog a pat on the arm before walking up beside Vex and looking in. The passage is very thin; it can fit one person at a time, though it may be an easy fit for the halfling and gnomes.

“It’s pretty spacious in here, I think.” Scanlan observes.

“Tiberius, can you send a little light down that passageway?” Vex beckons the Dragonborn over.

“Yeah, sure. You want to shoot an arrow for me, love?” he asks.

She nods, bringing out her bow and arrow. “Let’s do it!”

“Follow me Xena.” Vax says quickly.

“Wait what?” Xena questions

The moment it was shot, Vax chases the arrow and Xena follows cursing after him taking out her sword. As the arrow shaft vibrantly bursts into bright, Tiberius created light, it arcs slightly down the hallway. It goes pretty quickly and into what looks like a piece of rock, actually wedging itself into the rock before falling to the ground, chipping a chunk upon impact.

As it hits, it’s a small, roundish, oval chamber; small piles on the ground at the far end, still hard to make out from the distance for the others.

**Stealth Check:**

**Vax – 26**

**Xena – 15+7= 22**

“Vax’ildin what the fu-” Xena starts.

“Shush... can you smell that?” He asks looking around. “And it’s Vax.”

Resisting to bite his head off she took a deep breath, taking in the smell and releasing her temper. The air smells faintly of ancient untouched dust and mildew. Glancing at the floor, she notices the six long-dead bodies were strewn across the ground.

“Oh great, we found a body dumping pit.” Xena mutters, gripping her greatsword tighter.

Two human males, one female, and male dwarves, one female gnome and one half-orc... Xena stares down at the Half-Orc body feeling apprehensive over it for some reason.

“They were a, adventuring party... just like us, they have been down here long ago for whatever that was here.” Vax observes the bodies. “Thankfully the webs on these bodies are made from the small natural webs so there is that.”

“Yes cause death by fire spider is the way I wanna go.” she says insincerely, looking around.

Vax looks up from the bodies and scrutinizes the woman before him for a while before looking back at the bodies. “If we ever get out of here you and I are going to get drinks and compare notes.”

“If we get out of here, I will buy the first round.” She says quietly still on alert.

Vax smiles for but a moment then it turns into a scowl. “Each one of these has a giant hole bored into the bone itself, in different places of the skull.”

“Mindflayers.” Xena growls lowly.

“Maybe.” he says regarding the bodies before he starts searching all of them.

With a sigh, Xena walks over to the entrance and calls out. “It’s clear come in if you want shit before Vax takes them and gives some to Vex.”

“In that case, I will hang with Trinket and Grog out here.” Vex shouts back.

Xena quickly got out of the way as everyone else came in to look around as Vax looks at the dwarf male who still had his armor compared to the other bodies around him. The dwarven male had a golden chain-mail on and is clutching what looks like a metal maul, the female dwarf though with no armor or weapon, still has a pendant that is gleaming blue.

Vax grabs the pendant; it has a very beautiful sapphire emblem and, rubbing the dust off and look at it and... the emblem seems familiar to him and it came to him, it was the same emblem that adorned the House Thunderbrand of Kraghammer! Turning it over there’s an engraving on the back that says: “For Lorna, my love.”

“Here Tiberius.” He says over his shoulder, passing it to him. “I believe that is for you.”

“Oh!” Tiberius and the others look at it.

Vax turns back and almost double-takes as he sees Xena beside him.

“You are not even wondering why his stuff wasn’t taken?” She asks.

Vax shrugs and as he reaches out and grabs the golden chain mail, the cold air around the chain mail is noticeably piercingly cold to the touch.

“Oh shit.” He mutters before he begins gasping for air and falls onto his back.

“Goddammit, Vax’ildan!” Xena was upon him immediately to give him a look over.

His fingers are curling back as dark energy seeps into his body for a second, veins pulsing a bit. Vax could feel his strength fading away as his breath became shallow, he can only imagine this is what an elderly person would feel like.

“It’s Vax.” He corrects her before calling out as out as he could. “Pike!”

Pike and Kima run over and take a look over as Xena feels his forehead and checks over his body.

**Medicine Check:**

**Xena - 19+6= 25**

He feels cold to the touch, checking his pulse Xena feels that is slowing down at a fast rate, and his hands as she held it in her hands freezing. The only time she had seen such a thing was when one of the healers in the Order showed her a patient with such symptoms that happen so quickly was a victim of a curse.

“Lady Kima, Lady Pike I think he is cursed.” She tells.

Lady Kima nods, looking to the others. “It appears this dwarven individual when he came to his end, was not very happy and in doing so left a very strong curse behind on his ‘body’”

“I told you, you stupid man.” Xena scolds the rouge.

“You didn’t tell me shit.” He gasps.

“I said to question why no one touched the armor but noooo elf man wanted shiny armor!” she hisses rubbing her hands over his as if to help warm them up.

“Hey! That is half-elf man.” he croaks.

Xena rolls her eyes. “Gods even when you are cursed you need your last words!”

Vax grins.

“Everything okay in there?” Vex calls from outside.

“No.” He wheezes out to the entrance.

Xena snorts. “Stop making me laugh this is serious! You are cursed right now!”

“How do we get rid of it?” Keyleth asks with worry in every word as she looks from Pike to Vax to Xena. “What did you touch? What did you grab?”

“If I had to remove curse it would help.” Pike answers softly, looking down a bit ashamed. “But I do not have it.”

“Armour, it was the armor.” he rasps out, trying to point to the golden armor. “I was going to get it for you Pike.”

Pike winces in guilt. “Oh, Vax.”

“Lady Kima, surely you--” Xena begins to ask

“I do Xena, I assume you do.” She states more than questions

Xena nods.

“Excellent Xena, you got him?”

“Yes.”

“You got me?” he gasps.

“Yeah now shush.” she hisses.

With that Kima gets up and pushes everyone but Xena for a second and concentrates as she reaches up and grabs the holy symbol of Bahamut from underneath the front of the leather armor, and it glows with a vibrant silver light which then travels down her arm, to her hands, to her fingers, and she places it out and reaches towards the armor and as she touches it, she winces slightly but suddenly this glowing dark furious anger, this face arise out of the armor, giving off this slight whispering howl and then dissipates.

The divine energy begins to disappear from her hand Kima looks over to Xena. “Now!”

Xena grasps her own symbol with one hand and grabs Vax’s arm and begins to sing. “Lights will guide you home and ignites your bones and I will try to fix you.”

Divine energy swept through Xena’s body as she casts the Remove curse from Vax’s body. She smiles, looking up at the normal breathing Vax as everyone sighs with relief.

“Oh, that was easy.” Scanlan remarks.

Before Xena could let go, Vax grasps her by the hand and says. “That is one I owe you, you to Kima, I owe you.”

Kima gives him a wink and replies. “To be honest I just wanted the room to change into my armor.”

“And I am calling dibs for the armor, someone out there would buy it for sure.” Xena grins at Vax.

He chuckles. “It’s yours.”

While Xena takes the armor and puts it in her bag of holding, Lady Kima finds a cranny in the room, she puts on her armor, sighing in relief as she does with the familiarity, replacing the leather armor. She walks over, giving Pike the greatsword to give to Grog, and then takes the maul from the corpse of the male dwarf but as she does, she sits down and says a silent prayer. Clutches her symbol and as she does, she takes from one of her pouches a small bit of blessed water and tosses it across the body of the dwarf.

Puts it back away and stands up. “Alright, shall we continue?”

As they leave the cavern, Vax gives the dwarven bodies one of the arms raising signs of ‘Fuck you’ making Xena snort as she pushes him along. She almost freezes as she swears she heard a slight shift in bone but relaxes when Vax’s reply to it was the middle finger as they left in silence, left behind in the darkness.

Once they met up with everyone, Vex and Vax started a fight over the leather armor that Kima gave to Vex.

“Hey, hey, hold on a second!” Vax says as he grabs his sister by the shoulder.

“Too late. Let’s just keep moving, alright? Let’s just keep moving.” Vex tells everyone smiling away.

Until Vax grabs her by the ear and says. “That’s mine. That’s mine.”

“Ow ow!” She protests. “Come on, I need it.”

He lets go and gives her a look which she replies with a roll of her eyes as the two of them beginning to play boulder, parchment, shears for the armor... Vex won.

“Aha! It’s mine, it’s mine!” She mocks grabbing it away from him.

“It’s not fair!” he playfully whines before walking away.

“Wait what does it do?” Vex asks.

Vax throws his arms up in the air. “I’m not fucking-- you figure it out.”

Xena snorts at the sibling shaking her head at their childish fighting before the following Grog on carrying on their journey.


	9. Chapter 2 - Yug'Voril Uncovered Part 3

"So, Xena." Grog starts.

Xena could hear the others groan as he speaks.

"Where did you get the flaming sword?" He asks after glaring at his group.

"Oh, I found it after defeating a giant lava turtle with only a skin flask filled with water and an ax." She tells Grog with a straight-faced as she kept an ear out for anything.

**Persuasion Check: Xena – 11+4=15**

**Insight Check Grog – 1...**

"... Re-really?" Grog looks down at her in slight awe.

She nods, biting her lip as she can hear the others sputtering and snorting. "Indeed! This was of course after I solved a riddle for an Ancient White Dragon and had a cup of tea with a mad man and his rabbit."

"Ah-huh." Vex pokes out from the other side of Grog. "And did you dance with the ruler of the high elves?"

Xena scoffs. "Pfft not in a million years, no I danced the sword dance with the Tiefling Pirate Riptide Storm and ran away with his Ruby of the Sea who turned out to be the missing queen from a distant land and I was dubbed as a knight."

Vex smiles in amusement and wonderment, if it weren't for the full battle armor and the glare that could kill if it could, Vex and the others would think Xena Sharptooth was a bard of storytelling with how she describes in detail to Grog how she took the Ruby of the Sea from the hands of the pirate.

"Wow, that is fucking awesome!" he exclaims after she finished.

Seeing the excitement and admiration in his eyes Xena didn't have the heart to tell him she was bullshitting him and Lady Kima didn't look like she was going to correct or say anything which begs the question of why she was not all that friendly with the barbarian. Besides coming on a bit strong, he seemed like a sweetheart who loved his group very much.

Before Xena could open her mouth to tell Grog more her ears perked as what sounds like the distant lapping of waves against a shore.

"I can hear water." She reports, going up ahead. "Sounds like waves lapping."

"What?" Keyleth blinks in confusion.

"That's never good." Percy claims as rubs his chin.

As the tunnel begins to curve larger, eventually, they came around a bend and the tunnel opens up into a huge humongous cavern housing an underground lake circling a large island. From what Xena and the others could see on the edges of the walls that are closest to them as the island disappears into darkness about a few hundred feet ahead of them, there are the blue crystals that that were in the tunnels, completely covering the walls of this entire cavern. There are only bits and places around the wall, across where there will be no crystal, otherwise, it's just grey stone and blue crystal jutting from the sides.

Keyleth goes over to one of the crystal walls, placing a hand on the crystal and cast Daylight, it emanates from it and gives a bright beacon of light, from whatever crystal vein structure some of these are connected by, some of them tend to glow in spots, but it's localized.

"Huh, well besides it possibly giving away our position, that was kind of cool." Xena comments watching as the light faded away from the crystal.

Keyleth froze and slowly looked over to her with fear in her wide eyes. "I- I didn't think--"

"Whoa whoa, it is alright!" Xena lifts her hands at the druid. "They already know we are coming anyway, and like I said it was pretty."

Keyleth relaxes and smiles uncertainly at her group and friends, thankfully no one looked mad at her.

Percy approaches the water, the hard stone surface they have been walking on in the tunnels begins to give way to coarse sand, almost like a gravelly shore. It appears to be freshwater; it's clear and smells a little musty but not too bad that Xena takes an opportunity to test and drink her fill, she practically moans as the cold water slides down her dry lips and throat, cooling her down from months in the volcanic heat from before and starts refilling her skin flask.

"Hey! Good idea Xena, here everyone, give me your flasks so I can refill them!" Pike orders the others to bring out her own flask.

"I'll help you Pike!" Scanlan says coming up beside her.

With the two gnomes taking everyone's flasks they reach to either side of the half-orc and begin filling them up along with taking a drink themselves. Some of the others joined the three to take a drink themselves as others looked around themselves and the cavern.

There are these very gentle, soft waves that occasionally lap up on the shore, but only a few inches, not a whole lot of motion to the water within the cavern. This lake circled a large island across the way, on this side of the shore, central, there is a large bridge that arches over the lake and makes landfall about 200 feet on the other side, at the very tip closest to them of this island. The bride was about 15 feet wide, maybe 20, and is an immediate walkway onto this island across.

Xena looks over to Grog with a question in her eyes but surprisingly he catches the question and shook his head.

Apparently, they were not going over the bridge.

Faintly on the edges of this island a glowing bio-luminescent fungal forest that covers a large portion of the island's topside. The edges of it rise up into cliffs that have eroded over time and are rather stark in places.

"Plants! Look, living things!" Keyleth cries out looking at the mushroom forest.

"Clarota? Is this in any way dangerous?" Percy asks the mind flayer.

Xena looks over to the said mind flayer and does a double-take as it glides to the tavern and it almost looks like the creature was smiling... Kind of creepy.

He looks about and responds to Percy. "We're near home."

Percy stares at the mind flayer before turning to the others. "Let's all remember his feet don't actually touch the ground."

"Well, the water is alright." Xena assures him and the others as Pike and Scanlan return their flasks.

"Right." Grog says looking at the lake before asking. "Do you know if there is anything in the water?"

Clarota glances over at him. "There are many things in the water. Fish. Crustaceans."

He points over to this small, pale, colorless, whitish-grey crab that's over beside Xena. To her it was weird and malformed; one claw is twisted on itself and dragging behind it and it skitters into the water when spotted by Xena.

**Perception check:**

**Xena – 19**

**Vex – Natural 20!**

**Tiberius – 14**

**Keyleth – 20**

**Percy – 8**

**Grog – 6**

**Vax – 1**

**Scanlan – 1**

As they walk up to the edge of the shoreline as Vex looks over and on the far left of the side shore, just below the waterline is one or two sunken boats.

"I can't see shit." Vax squints his eyes.

"What?" Vex says. "There's a sunken boat in the lake."

"Really? Should I go get it?" Grog asks but gets ignored.

"But down here? Clarota, why? Why boats?" She inquires to the Mindflayer.

He gives her a look. "I do not know. Many things wander these tunnels beyond my kin. We are but one of the denizens."

"Well, that is comforting." Xena comments looking around herself and what the others didn't see is her taking off her armor and heavy clothing behind them.

Vex looks over to her group. "Who's a good swimmer?"

"Me!" Grog shouts putting a hand up along with Keyleth. "I'm actually a really good swimmer."

"You guys want to take a look?" Vex asks.

Keyleth runs over to the edge of the water and swan dives, as she does she turns into a k in the water. Grog runs into the water as well and does a cannonball.

"Grog you read my mind!" She says before Xena cannonballs into the water making everyone double take in surprise as pops out of nowhere pretty much in her underthings as she goes in after Grog.

Lady Kima facepalms and groans as quietly as she can at her ex-student be childish at a time like this. Simultaneously Percy and Vex had done the same since they didn't know what was in the water so there could be a water monster ready to snatch the two.

Scanlan was too busy trying to keep the image of Xena in her underthings in his mind for later.

Tiberius on the other hand gets to the edge of the shore and gets ready for when either Grog or Keyleth give the word for his assistance.

As soon as Xena dives in she almost screams as the ice-cold water surrounds her and what felt like making her into a solid ice figurine but gets her head out of the water and looks to Grog shakes and shivers from the water. "One and a half inches? Me, too."

Xena snorts as she watches Grog and Keyleth dive below as she got closer to the shoreline so she can have ground under her feet before beginning to scrub herself.

Percy blinks, tilting his head. "Um weren't you going to check the boats with Grog and Keyleth?"

She looks at him strangely. "No, I was actually going to come in here and clean myself. Don't know about you guys but gunk, blood, sweat, and dirt are not the best of smells in the world, plus my hair probably has god knows what in there."

"Really? You are taking a bath now?" Vex sighs as her brother and Scanlan gapes at the wet Half-Orc.

"Well, when else are we going to get an opportunity?! Besides, I just found a critter in my hair so... Ew." and with that, she dunks her head into the water and scrubs the crap out of her head to be rid of anything in there.

True to her word, many things came out of her hair that resurfaced in the water. It even attracted some fishes and crabs over to her as they grab little critters and what else had been on Xena's person.

"Oh Grog is gonna be pissed that he missed that." Scanlan says.

Pike smacks him over the head again.

Under, on the surface, Keyleth sees approximately two and a half boats that are made of some sort of a combination of wood and heavily rusted iron. One of them looks mildly serviceable, the other one is broken with a large hole in the bottom of it.

Keyleth does a lap, looking around there doesn't appear to be much else around, but she does catch what looks like a semblance of a half-eaten corpse, a bone that is left partially buried in the ground. She didn't know how long that's been there, either being bleached bone at this point. Whatever fishes live in this landscape have picked it clean.

Grog on the other saw the boats and got excited thinking. 'I found some boats, yo!'

Next, the thing he knew, a giant shark comes up under him and nudges you aggressively, and lifts him towards the surface.

Everyone watches as Grog is now riding a shark.

"..." Xena pauses in her scrubbing to watch. "Awesome."

"Clarota, is that mushroom forest, I mean is that your home?" Vex inquires.

"Should we go there? Should we skip it, Clarota?" Scanlan presses.

"The forest certainly surrounds the city." He informs them. "There are many places of entry within this cavern."

As Xena comes out she sees Clarota concentrates for a moment and within all of their minds, suddenly have a very clear image of this entire cavern: its layout, that strange shape it is, where the general overlook is, and as clear as day, have an entire visual of the inside of the cavern.

Xena blinks back to reality as Keyleth the shark and Grog return to the group. "So there are boats down there."

"Okay so what Vex said was true, well how to get them up?" Pike asks.

"Oh, is that all we need to do? Okay, fine." Tiberius says before walking into the water and slowly disappears beneath the surface.

"wha- What just happened?" Vax wonders out loud.

Keyleth was quick to follow after the Dragonborn as the bubbles break the surface and then eventually the bubbles stop.

"... Did your friend just drown?" Xena asks looking over to the group with wide eyes.

They went wider as everyone shrugs. 

Thankfully movement in the water catches their eyes as there's a rustle in the waves as all of a sudden this bowing and splashing begins to occur. A boat begins to rise out of the sediment on the bottom of the lake, it gets up, filled with water Tiberius tips it on its side and spill the rest of the water out and carry it over back to the surface with the power of telekinesis and rest it gently onto the rock.

Percy goes over to the boat. "I could try and repair the boat, in theory.

"Percy, why don't you give it a whack before we put the boat on the Mending Wheel?" Tiberius proposes as he shakes off the water.

"Didn't we already talk about you not bringing it around?" Xena asks.

Percy sighs adjusting his glasses. "Okay, I'm going to make a list of things that I'm going to need. I may have to send them down for more parts of the boats from the other boats."

Tiberius brings the half boat that's cracked in half and part of it is ruined and broken, but there's still a sizable amount of oxidized iron, metal, and wood here that Percy thinks would be serviceable for the repairs.

Scanlan comes forward to try and assist Percy with a song. "I'm on a boat, motherfucker! I'm on a motherfucking boat!"

Percy did not feel inspired, amused but not inspired as he pats Scanlan's shoulder with a grin does his best with what little inspiration he got.

Xena winces, before cleaning her ears of the water.

"Um." Kima walks over and whispers to Xena. "Maybe you should try? I know you are not a bard but, you may just help."

She looks at her teacher with an arched eyebrow before quietly going over and sit down beside Percy who looks up from the broken boat and looks over to her with a questioning look.

In a soft voice making sure everyone else was busy to not hear.

**It's time for a change  
I'm tired of that same ol' same  
The same ol' words the same ol' lines  
The same ol' tricks and the same ol' rhymes**

**Days precious days  
Roll in and out like waves  
I got boards to bend I got planks to nail  
I got charts to make I got seas to sail**

**I'm gonna build me a boat  
With these two hands  
It'll be a fair curve  
From a noble plan**

Percy stares in amazement as she sings to him in a small voice before smiling his thanks and returns to his work with vigor. He takes a while with it, a little longer than Percy anticipated, but he has the general tools with him.

Hammering away about an hour and a half to two hours later, he was sweating, muscles sore but managed to get the hole for the most part patched.

Now it's time to test its buoyancy.

"Let's put it in the water and see what happens." Percy says with a sigh.

Grog starts pushing the boat back into the water and leaps in the boat, it gives to the 600 pounds that is Grog; it splashes, it lifts, it seems to be holding and leaving ripples in the water as everyone sighs in relief and gives a thumbs up to Percy.

"Well, neither the boat nor the barbarian is sinking," Xena comments as Grog continues to jump and down in the boat in amusement before Vex went over and ordered him to stop it at once.

"Will it fit all of us. You think?" Vex wonders overlooking back at the boat and all of them.

"Well..." Xena looks over to the lake and sees Keyleth the shark swimming around and doing figure eights in the water. "I have a feeling princess is fine where she is as she is so that is one person off the list."

Percy looks to where she is looking. "Maybe, we can make a harness out of rope and have Keyleth tow us so that everyone's hands are free."

Xena and the two gnomes who were standing beside her nodded at the plan.

Tiberius saunters over next to Grog saying. "Excuse me."

He takes the bag of holding for a second and opens it to take out the magic carpet and hops on it, Vex tries to get on but Tiberius for some odd reason had other ideas.

"I'd rather be a free agent on this one, I'm not here to fight on water." He tells her, stopping her from getting on.

Vex gives him a look as Percy sets up a gun mount on the boat answering some of the others' questioning looks. "Just in case."

Grog shrugs, grabbing the rope to tie to the boat before going over to where Keyleth awaits, telling her the plan, and gives her the rope. She gently takes the rope and waits till everyone gets in the boat and ready to go.

"Trinket, get in the boat." Vex tells the bear as the others climb in.

"Huh." Seeing the overcrowding of the boat takes her bag of holding and looks through her own bag of holding. "It is a good thing I went to that shop before I left with Lady Kima."

As Vox Machina talked out just which way to go and what to do as she looks at the bottles, keeping anything expensive away from the eyesight of the shinny seeking ranger as she read the labels. She found the bottle of flying that nearly took all her money.

"Does anyone know how to steer this thing?" Vax asks the group.

"We're shark-powered." Percy points to the rope at the front of the boat where shark Keyleth swam around.

"That is impressive." Vax remarks.

Vex ignores Tiberius's opinion and hops on the carpet with him and he stutters a bit and looks forward.

Lady Kima looks over to Xena. "What exactly did you buy that I had to be the one to buy our food supplies?"

Looking abashed for a moment, Xena only smiles and says. "Happy thoughts."

With that, she takes a swig of the potion, and the next thing anyone knew Xena rises into the air and begins to glide around the area to tests her new ability to fly.

"She can fly?"

"She can fucking fly?!"

"She flew!"

"I want one of those!"

"What else has she got in there."

"Vex... no."

"Oh, Pike you're no fun."

"I concur with Lady Pike, you do not touch the bag."

She flies her way down to the others and hovers. "Alright, where are we going?"

"To the island, there is a cave nearby." Pike says.

Continuing the right side of the path, they push off into the water, being towed by Keyleth in shark form. She hugs the edge of the water, pushing through she finds a way around and begins to look up the wall, the crystalline structures are spread out across this entire wall, going up. Can't even see the ceiling of the cavern, it's so high up from the current perspective, it just disappears into the darkness.

Following the path until eventually come to this chokepoint here, where the beach begins to crest down and touch the water. As they slowly and quietly make their way around the bend, Xena looks over and see the forest; Indeed, they appear to be trees, but now that she had a better view of it, maybe about 400, 500 feet from where they were, that bio-luminescent glow is given off by all the plant life, all these giant fungal trees.

The roots have these strange, organic, almost like they're gripping the ground. The canopies of them blossom these strange, almost mushroom-like appendages, these fungal bursts that stick off the top and form the tree-like canopy.

"I wonder what Princess would have to say about this." Xena wanders, looking at these... fungal trees.

Looking across, the tops of a few buildings in the very, very distant, the cover of stone from what she could make out, has almost a jade mixed with grey marble. Xena can just faintly make off in the distance one large pyramid-like structure that comes to a flattened precipice on top and there is a very faint greenish glow at the top that matches the coloration of that same glow in the eyes of Queen Ulara earlier and the rest of the denizens that were in her party.

Xena's eyes narrowed at it, it must be the temple and where K'Varn was waiting for them.

As they quietly begin to push along, where there's a beach to their right and the island to the left. The island comes to an incline and then drops off on a cliff on the far side. It has its own encapsulated fungal forest and what looks like a bit of ruin on the beachfront that has mostly crumbled and fallen. However for the most part it appears to be fairly empty, other than the fungal grown itself.

To the right, there is another pebble beach, the same consistency as the beach they first arrive on.

"Should we land on the beach and then check out that little cave?" Vex asks the group.

"Yeah." Was Grog's automatic answer.

Percy nods in agreement. "Yes, I think that's an excellent idea."

Vax hums. "We're all very curious."

Scanlan shakes his head. "I am not curious."

Xena snorts.

Vex and Tiberius fly overhead, gliding down she could see the ruins, even though there is no real breeze or wind in the cold air, there is a slight swaying. Looking to the beach by the cave it looks like a plain pebbled beach, an inlet that goes into the cavern interior of the wall.

Vax scoops up Scanlan and carries him piggyback style and jumps off the boat and onto the beach, Percy decides to stay with Keylith and the boat while everyone else made their way into the cavern.

**Stealth Check:**

**Xena – 12+7= 19**

**Scanlan – Nat 20!**

**Tiberius – 13**

**Vex – 13**

**Grog – 6**

**Vax – 27**

Despite their best efforts, the group not so stealthily begin to march or glide in Xena, Tiberius, and Vex case into the tunnel, they follow as it bends around a little bit and it eventually opens up into a large space, and as they enter the room, partway through the tunnel the scent changes dramatically.

The cold still water smell begins to give way to this terrible, sulfurous, rotting smell, very near septic, Xena coughs a bit from the smell as she enters, the smell dreadful. With the help of her darkvision and Tiberius's light, she could tell that there has been some sort of struggle. There are about three to four bedrolls and sheets strewn about, soiled, turned, and town across the floor, a semblance of what was a fire pit, but all the soot and ash has been smeared across the ground to the outside of it.

In the far corner there was a half-buried chest or container that Xena can see Vex perk up at the sight of it, and what looks to be four dead bodies, is a not too long state of decay; there was still flesh and skin but there are some bones peeking through, they all slumped against the ground at the corners.

"Hey Vax, why don't you go mess with them?" Scanlan jokes as he gets down from Vax's back.

Vax gives him a look before looking over to the chest his sister has been looking at and the bodies themselves as Tiberius whispers into the earring to tell the others what they found.

"This looks a little dangerous." Vex states looking around warily.

Percy sighs rubbing his face and hair with his hands. "Alright."

"We're killing something?" Grog asks excitedly.

"Be ready to run." Vex tells the others.

Grog on the other hand comes running in as Vax takes out one dagger and throws it at the chest to sink it into the lid from a ways back, which doesn't seem to have any immediate effect.

Seeing no reaction Vax moves forward and attempts to open the chest.

"Uh, Vax'ildan." Xena calls out. "With your luck, I do not think it would be wise for you to-"

One of the bodies shifts with a moan.

"Oh fuck a duck." Xena swears.

Moaning its head rolls around and looks at Vax.

"Pike?" Vax squeaks. "Someone call Pike?"

"Percy, undead!" Vex speaks quickly into the earring.

"Alright, we're on our way, Pike come on!" Percy says taking Pike out from the boat and following after Grog as they run into the cave.

Xena now out of flying power lands on the ground and swiftly takes her sword out as the body looking at Vax gives him this weird grin. She had few encounters with zombies or undead creatures that unnaturally move, this one had intelligence that disturbs her.

Vax immediately glances over at the other bodies, who are already getting to their feet.

"Dammit, Vax'ildan!" Xena curses, turning around to face the undead closest to her.


	10. Musical Special Episode Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you have suggestions for songs you think would fit this fanfic then by all means let me know!

Muscial Special Episode 2

**The Wolf Song – Nordic Lullaby**

**Sang by Jonna Jinton**

It was Xena’s turn to watch the camp while everyone went to sleep, the little fire they kept crackled in the darkness and all she could think as she stared into it was the woods she had roamed before coming to this place. She wasn’t much of a nature person like some people but she could respect and admire the beauty and strength of it all, from the trees that stretched their branches to the sky towards the sun, the wind that could simply caress your hair gently to tearing through one’s home in an instant and the rain that gives life and if pressed, can take life.

She honestly missed it.

What she missed the most, besides her friends in the village was the sounds of the wolves. There was a pack of wolves that never breached the village territory despite the livestock that lived there, and during the nights Xena can hear them in the distance, calling to either the moon, warning rival packs, or to their companions.

As she closes her eyes, she could almost hear them.

**Vargen ylar i nattens skog** **  
(The wolf is howling in the forest of the night)  
Han vill men kan inte sova  
(He wants to, but cannot sleep)  
Hungern river i hans varga buk  
(The hunger is scratching his wolfen stomach)  
Och det är kallt i hans stova  
(And it’s cold in his burrow) **

**Du varg du varg, kom inte hit** **  
(Wolf, wolf, don’t you come here)  
Ungen min får du aldrig  
( I will never let you take my child) **

What Xena didn’t know, as she had her eyes closed and singing softly into the darkness, were a pair of elven ears perking up to the voice floating in the air. They knew this song, their mother uses to sing this to them during the harsh winters, when predators came too close to their home, she told them it was a song to protect them from those who hunger in the cold night.

Vax brought his sister closer, feeling her shake and give away a slight sniffle. Though it brought memories they wished not to remember, it gave them the comfort it had before and they wonder who could have taught Xena Sharptooth a song that they thought only their mother knew.

**Vargen ylar i nattens skog** **  
(The wolf is howling in the forest of the night)  
Ylar av hunger o klagar  
(Howling out of hunger and moaning)  
Men jag ska ge’n en grisa svans  
(But I will give him a pig tail)  
Sånt passar i varga magar  
(That’s what the wolfen stomach needs)**

Xena throws another scrap of wood into the fire as she continues to sing, she can remember that night, coming across that lycan woman and her children in the woods. In payment for food and a warm night to sleep the mother told Xena stories of her people and even songs that her people sang when they took wolf form to protect their human children on those nights.

“It is not really a secret.” She smiled in amusement looking down at her sleeping sons. “Funny enough the song itself was made by villagers that were scared of the wolves, my clan’s leader of long past heard the song in their beast form and it calmed him down, he passed it down to generations and to be truthful nothing could keep our my mind in peace but that song.”

**Du varg du varg, kom inte hit** **  
(Wolf, wolf, don’t you come here)  
Ungen min får du aldrig  
( I will never let you take my child)**

Since that night, and when she could hear the wolves cry in the night Xena sang the lullaby and to her surprise not only did it quiet the wolves down but relaxed Xena herself.

**Vargen ylar i nattens skog** **  
(The wolf is howling in the forest of the night)  
Han vill men kan inte sova  
(He wants to, but cannot sleep)  
Hungern river i hans varga buk  
(The hunger is scratching his wolfen stomach)  
Och det är kallt i hans stova  
(And it’s cold in his burrow) **

**Du varg du varg, kom inte hit** **  
(Wolf, wolf, don’t you come here)  
Ungen min får du aldrig  
( I will never let you take my child) **

As the sound of the wolves in her head quieted along with the song, she sends more wood into the fire and thinks of her home once more only this time, with a smile gracing her lips.


	11. Chapter 3 – K’Varn Revealed – Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Travis Willingham as Grog, Goliath Barbarian
> 
> Marisha Ray – Keyleth, Half-Elven Druid
> 
> Taliesin Jaffe – Percy, Human Gunslinger
> 
> Ashley Johnson – Pike, Gnome Cleric
> 
> Sam Riegel – Scanlan, Gnome Bard
> 
> Orion Acaba – Tiberius, Dragonborn Sorcerer
> 
> Liam O'Brien – Vax'ildan – Half-Elven, Rouge
> 
> Laura Bailey – Vex'ahlia – Half-Elven, Ranger
> 
> Gina Carano – Xena Sharptooth – Half- Orc, Paladin
> 
> AND
> 
> Mathew Mercer – The Dungeon Master
> 
> In case anyone wonders what Xena does in the opening theme she is slicing the air with her sword and gripping her shield before going in a stance with the sword in front of her face.

**Roll Initiative!**

**Percy – 25**

**Vex – 20**

**Grog – 20**

**Tiberius – 16**

**Vax – 13**

**Keyleth – 12**

**Xena – 9**

**Pike – 7**

**Scanlan – 7**

Percy tugs on the rope three times in succession to let Keyleth know that it’s time to boogie. Taking the rope he jumps out of the boat, goes to the nearest wall placing a bit of rope to it he lines up his enchanted ice chamber in his Pepperbox, fire, and with an extremely loud echoing gunshot sound throughout the cavern. The bullet itself ricochets and spins off into the distance, into the darkness, but left behind, where part of the rock has chiseled from the impact, ice has coalesced and cracked and holds the rope to the edge of the cavern.

With that done he reloads his gun and books it into the tunnel.

“There’s no blood being had without me!” Grog roars as he leaps out of the boat, splashing as he trudges up to the shore, run across the gravel beach, and starts heading straight into the cavern yelling with a big old goliath scream after Percy,

Vex casts Hunter’s Mark on who appears to be the leader of the undead before casting Conjure Barrage at them all as she whistles for Trinket.

The undead all swarm in, rushing around with an unnatural speed.

“Age ain’t slowing them down nothing!” Vax exclaims as they group around him. “Wow! Hi, fellas!”

Portions of their jaw dangling, with these sharp, awful blackened teeth that are broken and gnarled.

“I feel so popular!” Vax says, getting his daggers ready.

“What is with you and the undead?!” Xena demands to know.

“It must be the new cologne I am wearing!” he replies.

The first thing Vax notices as the undead gets up close and personal; one of them is giving off an awful stench. It was the smell that wafted into their noses when they first entered the cavern is now strong that it’s nearly overpowering as all these horribly-muddied and half-rotted claws start sinking past his armor, into his flesh, the back of his neck.

One catches him in the side and it all happens so fast, he felt like he was getting spun around by the sheer force of the impact. Which of two he feels this sense of strange rot impeding upon his system, but he shrugs it off, but one of them still manages to sift through and his system seizes, all the muscles in his body begin to tighten up, and suddenly he is unable to move.

“Send your fireball right here!” Vax mutters through his lips to Tiberius.

“No!” Scanlan and Vex protests.

“That would be bad.” Xena says pausing in her charge just in case.

“This doesn’t look good.” Tiberius states before casting Obelisk of Stone on Vax.

As he finished casting, some of the actual sand that fills the bottom of the cave begins to swirl up in a wind around Tiberius’s hands, and as he lifts his arms up, a single column of stone shakes and shifts out of the ground, lifting the paralyzed body of Vax 15 feet into the air.

Xena was thankful that the actual cavern looked to be 25 feet or there would have been a Half-Elf pancake.

Lifting the pillar up with one hand, the dust settles and falls from his hand and as it does the other hand begins to coalesce a small bead of red burning energy. He flings it out with his off hand, it streaks across, hits the base of the pillar, and explodes with a blast of red fiery magical energy.

As Pike, Trinket, Grog, and Percy are running into the cavern, they hear a loud familiar explosion sound that has this weird full thud and then flaming heat. Flickers of light from around the bend and this wave of heat hits them.

In the explosion, as it finishes, three undead are completely incinerated and are left as burning cinders on the ground and somehow one’s still standing. However, the force of the explosion also destroys the pillar from underneath.

“Oh!” Scanlan cries out.

“Oh shit!” Tiberius swears.

Causing Vax to fall from the pillar, he manages to catch himself and didn’t hurt himself too much.

As the smoke filters out of the way and she makes a visual, she sees her brother on the ground, currently seizing, and in the rubble, and a shadow of one of the undead, still standing angrily as it rears back with its claws forward and gives this horrible gnashing sound as its jaws open and actually widens.

Vex’s sitting on the carpet she cancels her spell and simply pulls out her bow and arrow and rapidly releases two arrows in succession, she bears down and releases one arrow, piercing the side of its shoulder. As it reaches out to break it off, its tongue out, the second one goes into the tongue, out the back of the throat now choking it reaches up and breaks off the arrow in the throat, looks forward to Vex, goes to lunge and as it does, it just collapses on top of his body no longer moving.

The rest of the group finally make their way into the cavern with Grog panting looking around for something to kill. Vax manages to shrug off the rest of the paralyzation, stiffly getting up and find his way out of the rubble.

“Can we land? Tiberius?” Vex asks.

“I’m sorry, yes.” he nods.

“Tell me it’s not over.” Grog pouts.

Scanlan looks over. “Oh sorry, Grog. The fight’s over.”

“Sorry, Grog.” Tiberius follows after.

Vex rushes over to his brother along with Xena to push the body off of her brother and allow Xena to cure wounds on Vax.

“Are you alive?” Vex asks her brother.

“I’m alive.” he assures her.

“Gods we will never be going to fight this K’Varn if we keep healing your dumb-ass.” Xena mutters before humming her healing spell into him.

“And we are very grateful for you healing him Xena.” Vex insists, dusting some of the dirt and sand from her brother before giving him a look and starts looking towards the treasure chest with Scanlan.

“Good job bad asses!” Vax shouts to his sister and the dragon-born before slightly wincing as the healing kicked in.

Percy sighs and goes back to the boat shaking his head.

The next thing everyone knew, another explosion of fire blows causing to take a step back and Vax to quickly grab Xena and evade the fire, dodging out of the way instinctively.

“Oh for fuck’s sake CHECK THE FREAKIN’ CHEST FOR TRAPS NEXT TIME YOU GREEDY LITTLE WOMAN!” Xena yells, very much scared the wits out of nearly being burnt to a crisp again.

“I’m sorry!” Vex shouts back, looking abashed and a little burnt.

“Just get your bum over here so I can heal you too!” Xena sighs as she rubs her hand together to start up Lay On Hands for her.

After the healing session once more, Vex goes back to where the chest was, most of the chest is destroyed. What she finds though is a slightly charred two-handed blade, and there was some armor but it is completely destroyed by the blast. The good news there are a number of coins in there.

Vex decided to give it to Grog since Xena already has her flaming sword.

“I don’t know if it’s magic Grog, so you might want to have Tiberius have a look at it.” She tells the Goliath.

“Hold on, let me check.” He takes the sword and shakes it really hard.

Tiberius raises a.... darkened scale brow at Grog. “That’s not how you really--”

“I think I know what I'm doing.” Shakes it some more. “Alright, here you can check it.”

The dragon-born takes a moment to inspect it before telling Grog that it was the Greatsword of Frenzy, which of course excited the goliath.

“Maybe I could use it?” Scanlan says with a pout.

Grog looks down at his friend. “It’s bigger than you.”

Scanlan shrugs in agreement.

Xena didn’t even try to look at the bodies as she stops beside Vax. “Thank you.”

Vax looks up from dusting the rest of the rubble and dirt to look over to the Paladin. “Hmm?”

“For, you know, getting me away from the blast, guess we’re even.” Xena says crossing her arms with a slight grin, showing her tusks.

Vax blinks taking in her words before grinning in reply. “Oh I am sure with the trouble this group gets into I will be in your debt once more.”

“I’m just going to keep this with the party gold.” Vex says finding a diamond on the leader zombie’s pocket.

“With the party treasury? Oh, sure.” Scanlan says giving her a look before turning back around to find anything shiny in the cave.

“Plus one diamond to the treasury.” Vex mutters writing it down in her ledger.

Tiberius walks up to Vex. “Vex, let me see the diamond just for one second.”

Vax and Xena look over to the group in interest.

Tiberius takes out his Wheel of Mending out of the bag of holding.

(I guess Grog was carrying it around in the bag.)

“Is it going to turn back into coal?” Vex asks.

Tiberius frowns at her. “That’s not how it works, Vex.”

He takes the diamond from her hand, he places the diamond in the center, and spins the wheel, the actual cracks on the surface of it slowly begin to mend. Eventually, the diamond is brought to a solid, undamaged, finely-cut example of a diamond.

“Whoa, sparkles!” Vex stares in awe.

“There you go.” Tiberius says as he gives the diamond back to Vex.

“Pike.” Scanlan speaks up. “It might be a good time to try and heal Vax’s foot with Xena again. And also, while we have a moment, did we ever discern what is in that yellow vial?”

“Oh, this thing?” Tiberius takes it out as Pike walks over to Vax and Xena to prepare the healing of the foot again.

“Yeah, do we know that this is?” Scanlan asks.

Scanlan takes the vial and looks at it, and can only guess it is not the most friendly of potions.

While Pike begins her healing, Vax looks over to his sister and sees a look on her face. “You look weird. What’s up?”

Vex slowly looks to the group and whispers as she nods to the ceiling. “I think maybe... We should not be hanging out in this room right now.”

Well, that got Xena on high alert, following her eyesight, at first it looks like it’s part of the cavern ceiling. It has this weird texture, looks almost like the smooth rock that the interior of the cavern comes off as. However, as it shifts and moves, it looks almost like a portion of it is moving and slowly crawling, and it looks like there’s a red gleaming eye, and then two and something drops down from the side, almost like a tail that seems to dangle for a second.

At which point, it detaches, opens up almost like a giant ray, with a screeching mouth that screams at you as it lands onto the ground before the group.

**Roll Initiative**

**Vax – 25 Nat**

**Xena – 24**

**Percy – 22**

**Grog – 21**

**Pike – 20 NAT!**

**Keyleth – 20**

**Tiberius – 18**

**Scanlan – 11**

**Vex – 10**

As the creature stands there it’s giving off this weird, horrible sound and just starting to fill everyone’s ears.

“RUN!” Vax commands as he grabs his sister and dashes off.

“Get on the damn carpet, you fools!” Tiberius shouts.

Following orders for what Xena could guess for the first time in their lives, the twins climb up onto the carpet.

Percy who made it to the boat hears someone yell ‘Run!’ from inside the cave and starts unhooking the boat and getting it ready to go.

“Fuck that shit I am out.” Xena books it. “Don’t mind me I am just going to take Scanlan and leave excuse me please!”

**Strength Check**

**12+10= 22**

“Wait what – agh!” Scanlan squeaks as he is suddenly picked up by Xena as she runs into the tunnel to where the boat is at.

Grog decided to rage... and runs right past everyone!

Pike sees the running barbarian and tries to catch a ride with him, so as she runs up, she leaps and grabs onto Grog’s back she manages to find purchase but Grog instinctively reaches back with an elbow and hits in the side of the armor, which knocks her flat on her back.

Xena comes to a screeching halt and turns towards Pike as she shoves Scanlan to her shoulders. “Hold the fuck on Scanlan we are picking up another passenger!”

Grog just keeps running, he glances over his shoulder for a second but because he was raging, he doesn’t see Pike, he just sees shadows in the cavern. So he starts moving his hands in the air, freaking out holding his ax in one hand and the greatsword in the other, just panic screaming.

The large, ray-like, cloaked creature swoops down towards the top of the carpet riders and takes a bite at Tiberius and would have gone after Scanlan but Xena had grabbed him on the way out. It comes out and sinks its teeth into the Dragonborn's form, across his shoulder area, and it bites down.

“You’re ruining my robe!” Tiberius grunts.

The creature wraps around him and completely envelops him like a blanket. Tiberius’s vision goes dark and feels unable to really move.

“Get off of me!” Tiberius roars as he lets out his Dragon’s breath of fire at the creature.

All of a sudden bits of flame begin to shoot out from the corners of where it’s wrapping around the torso of Tiberius, surrounding his head. The tail flicks around in pain as everyone hears this muffled screaming sound as it keeps, still tight around his head, fighting through the damage and maintaining its hold on him.

Getting frustrated Tiberius instills the loun stone to trigger as he does the force begins to pull it off, and flings it off of his head. The creature is detached and thrown back at the wall, and off of Tiberius. With a growl of victory, he gets the carpet motors running and flies off out of the cave.

To Xena’s surprise and confusion Scanlan jumps off her, runs to Pike, taking his hand out to her, and says. “Pike, come with me if you want to live.”

Before Pike could really say anything he just holds her really tight, sniffs her hair and it smells like strawberries, and then he Dimension Door them to the boat.

“Scanlan, thanks!” Pike thanks him as they land on the boat.

“Don’t worry! That hardwood is the boat.” he says.

Percy facepalms.

Xena was sweating now as she thought she was the only one left in the cave and didn’t feel like she had time to find another potion for this situation when suddenly she hears.

“Xena jump onto the carpet! Trinket! Run” Vex shouts out. “Tiberius get it as close to her as possible!”

Xena and Vex switch places as Vex jumps on top of her bear and the two of them start bolting down the hallway as Vax assists Xena onto the carpet and follow after them swiftly. Clarota vanishes without a trace while Kima runs on her little halfling legs to the carpet and just gets onto it.

“Go, go, go!” She persists.

“I am going!” Tiberius yells back.

With everyone booking it they all make their way outside of the cavern to the ship. As Keyleth begins to pull the boat away, the boat picks up speed into the water, and they hear a familiar moaning sound that begins to get louder as the creature swooshes out of the cavern giving chase.

While Percy readies his gun Vax turns around and throws his daggers at the beast; unfortunately, it’s hard to take the form of the creature. It seems to almost embrace the shadows around it, and it gets harder and harder to see and for a moment Vax swore he saw two more appear at its sides.

Xena takes this time to take out her heavy crossbow and takes aim at the creature with her Hunter’s Mark.

**NATURAL TWENTY I ROLLED A NATURAL 20!**

Xena waited until the three rays of death became one form before aiming straight at the mouth as it continued its moaning making it choke on the bolt as she reloads her crossbow one more time and shoots again and hits its shoulder this time making fly down a little.

Percy follows suit and leans the giant sniper cannon that he had constructed up against the side of the boat, aiming it up and take a shot; Unfortunately, it misses, and the boat rocks from the impact of the explosion.

For a moment everyone on the boat thought it was going to list and take on water.

As he curses and reloads, Grog seeing as he hasn’t got anything to get close the beast steadies himself on the boat and gets ready for when it comes closer. Pike sends a guiding bolt at it and thinks it hits one of them, but it seems to hit one of the groups of three that now flying overhead, one shimmers and vanishes seemingly unaffected by the bolt.

The creature gains up on the boat gliding down towards them, making Grog smile in anticipation, there are now two of them side by side that are heading towards them. It’s then that, that strange moaning sound it’s making begins to grow louder and louder making everyone closes their ears for a second.

**Wisdom Saving Throw**

**Scanlan – 0**

**Tiberius – 4**

**Percy – 1**

**Grog – 13**

**Vex – 11**

**Vax – 14**

**They didn’t say Pike so I can only guess she got hit to**

**Xena – 14... oh whoops Half-Orcs immune to being frightened.. oh well!**

Grog, Vex, Xena, Kima, and Clarota were quick to cover their ears and shake it off not a problem... everyone else, however.

In their eyes, this creature all of a sudden, its form becomes far more frightening than they have ever seen before; it almost seems to swell with the cavern.

The Goliath shakes off the moan and looks over to Vax and Xena saying. “Oh, that’s lovely.”

With an amused grin he turns back around to the beast steps forward, pushing Pike and Scanlan to the side a little bit, and just glares at this creature and gives a giant bestial goliath shout out into the cavern that counteracts the moan that it’s doing.

The creature with its teeth bared, wings out, looking extremely frightening... looking visibly shaken as it begins to flap backward and actually gets about a distance away from the boat.

“That’s right bitch!” Grog crows.

Tiberius looks at the creature, looks around a bit before looking to the others on the boat, and asks. “Hey what do you think I should do guys!”

Everyone stares at the Dragonborn for a long silent moment despite the creature flying for them and Keyleth the shark swimming as hard as she can.

He clears his throat, looking away from the group, and tries to think what he can do as Scanlan stands up in the boat his eyes squinting just scared to even do anything with this creature, he tries out a new spell that he only just recently managed to conjure to his attention.

“Talk to the hand!” Scanlan sings.

As he finishes, the rippling sonic energy from his singing shoots out from in front of him and forms this giant, slightly ethereal-looking arcane fist the size of the creature that reaches out, grabs onto it as he’s moving his hand, controlling it silently from a distance.

It grapples the creature, holds it in place as its wings are also folded on itself, and gets pulled down. As it is currently held in place, screeching there is this strange crushing sound of bone breaking on the inside of its strange form.

As Vex’s on the boat, she sees the hand grasping, giving her a moment of bravery she casts Hunter’s Mark, and let loose two arrows into the slightly dark, shrouded exterior of the boat, both arrows strike true into the currently grappled cloak-like creature.

Portions of it are trying to squeeze free of this arcane hand, one arrow strikes through its wing, leaving a gaping wound in the middle, it’s going to have a hard time maintaining height if it ever got loose.

The second pierced one of its red, glowing eyes, it gives out a horrible painful screeching sound into the cavern. What was once two gleaming red, piercing eyes, left with only one, and darkness on the other side of its face.

Clarota attempts to Mind Blast at the creature since Lady Kima couldn’t do much herself and damages a bit.

Tiberius snaps his fingers with an idea and focuses his energies once again, even just facing this creature, is a terrifying thing- one gleaming bit of red that’s piercing through the darkness but is yanked right out of its socket. It now gives out another painful screech as it is blinded, being crushed by a Bigby Hand, and now have drifting among them at Tiberius control, one of the eyes of this creature.

Xena gapes in disgust kind of feeling sorry for the beast.

Tiberius floats the eye over and puts it in a vial for safekeeping.

Vax shakes his head at the Dragonborn as it sniffs the eye before throwing daggers once more at the beast. As the creature is flailing about in torturous pain, suddenly a dagger sinks into the empty socket in the front of its face. The body tenses up and reaches out against the force of Scanlan’s arcane hand, and then it falls limp with the grasp.

As Scanlan slowly drifts over the limp body of the creature to the edge of the boat everyone went to take a little closer look at this creature. Tiberius was able to tell the group that it is a Cloaker, not normally found in this area but are known to be quite stealthy and usually hunts alone or wounded prey, why it decided that their group was a good idea to take on without a partner... Xena can only imagine it doesn’t get much food in the area.

“I’ve got a great idea..” Percy says looking back at the group. “I am going to skin this thing and use it for our boat.”

With that plan in mind, they drift along the open area as everyone once again plans what they are going to do next as Xena sat on the carpet watching the area around them.


End file.
